


Fate: Recourse Light (Prototype)

by TouhouSniper98



Category: Fate/Grand Order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:22:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 52,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23664580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TouhouSniper98/pseuds/TouhouSniper98
Summary: Original work of Fate/Recourse Light written over at Fanfiction.net.
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

Title: **Fate: Recourse Light**  
Category: Anime/Manga » Fate/stay night  
Author: Hieda no Akyuu  
Language: English, Rating: Rated: T  
Genre: Adventure/Fantasy  
Published: 08-03-17, Updated: 12-15-19  
Chapters: 75, Words: 361,139

* * *

**Chapter 1: It's Always Sunny in California**

* * *

**A/N:**

**I didn't think I would get into mobile games. Even when I heard about Grand Order from my friend who's a total Type Moon slave, I wasn't all that interested. Then it came out on NA, and suddenly here I am wondering where all my free time and some $500 went.**

**And now here I am, writing a fanfic about it. Oh boy, as if I don't have enough on my plate already.**

**Please read below for an unnecessary amount of disclaimers that will hopefully keep this fanfic from being as hated as my other one:**

**This fanfic will be not be based on any of the story arcs featured in Grand Order; rather, it'll be more based on my personal "adventures" with the game and the servants who I happened to roll. If anything, this story will only be loosely based on the story arcs as they appear in order in Grand Order. In addition, the only servants who will be featured (due to the fact that there are so many characters in Grand Order, even on the NA version) will be 4-stars and 5-stars and whoever else I like enough to have featured in this fanfic. Please don't get offended if your favorite servant doesn't show up here (or be offended, it's up to you, really).**

**I am not a Type Moon slave, and I do not know the Nasuverse in and out. The world in which this fanfic is set, therefore, will not strictly be set in a Nasuverse-like setting, though I will try my best to make sure that this fanfic follows Nasuverse lore as closely as possible, so if there are any mistakes in terms of lore, by all means feel free to correct me and I will try my best to make revisions wherever possible (unless I specifically say I want certain things to be the way I write them). I foresee myself making plenty of mistakes when it comes to this, and most likely what will end up happening is that I will simply be inserting my own headcanon into this fanfic due to my relative lack of intimacy with the characters and their designs, so whenever you get triggered that I miss or screw up some details about how certain things should be, try not to be and just remind yourself that this is only a fanfiction written by a guy who's never even watched Fate Zero in its entirety. (I should really get on that.)**

**If you know me from other stories, you will know that I have a tendency to write** _very_ **strong OC main characters. This fanfic may or may not be an exception to this trend. At the time of writing this Author's Note, I still don't know my OC's design or even name, so whatever follows after this is just a shot in the dark, both for me as a writer and you as a reader. So if you're the kind who absolutely** _detests_ **OC's that even** _hint_ **at being Gary Stu's or Mary Sue's or whatever else fanfic lingo exists out there to denote overpowered original characters, then this fanfic is probably not for you.**

 **Finally, because I am mainly concentrating most of my efforts on writing another fanfic, this** **story will not be updated frequently - at best, I only see myself updating this story maybe once a week. Who knows, maybe I may even end up abandoning this story too if I just feel like I can't spare any time for it at all. But for now, at least, while I've got this little extra bit of fire in me to at least start this story, I'll see how far I go before that fire burns out.**

**(EDIT 3/27/18)**

**The above portion of this A/N was written when I first published this fanfic under the FGO archive. Upon insistence from one of my readers, I've since moved it here to the FSN archive instead, so everything above the edit tag is seven months old and thus outdated.**

**I now intend to update this fic on a semi-regular basis, now that I've gotten the feel for how I want to pace my own writing and the direction in which I'd like to take this fic. I also intend to base the arcs of this fic on those seen in Grand Order, but with a personal twist to them and perhaps some original content as well, though I'll have to see how that pans out.**

**Everything else, however, is still up for grabs.**

**-Akyuu no Joshu**

* * *

A sharp clack rattles the air of my office as I set down the phone receiver back down onto its port.

Damn those idiots over at that one trucking agency...their drivers are good, but the goddamn people who handle their logistics are ass. Maybe if I used that agency more often for more of my shipments, I'd consider giving the guy who runs the place a call and tell him to fire half his office staff, because they hardly do shit. Thankfully it's only that one trucking agency, all the other ones I work with aren't bad. At least, not as bad as this one.

I make some last few notes with a red pen on the delivery order papers in a few manila folders, now that I've yelled at them to give me their container delivery times. This one's tomorrow at nine in the morning, this one's at ten, and this one's also at nine. This one got pulled over for MET examination, so we'll set that aside for now. With these notes written, I gather them up, stack them neatly together, and lean over to the racks of manila folders I've got standing on a separate desk next to my main desk, and I file those folders accordingly by my self-designated reference numbers.

And with that, so ends my daily morning work routine. Now time to get some lunch.

As I get up from my chair, I swipe my right hand from left to right, like I'm handling a large touchscreen monitor. In response, a non-standard light blue rune pops up out of thin air before me, showing me a set of four small panels. They don't have any words or letters, just symbols, and one of them has a familiar power symbol. I tap it, and my fingers physically get stopped by the panel floating in the air before me, which blinks with a brighter shade of blue for a moment to confirm my selection as the other panels shimmer out of view rather nicely and beautifully. The panel I've selected then drops down a list of three more options, labelled "Turn Off Peripherals", "Power Down Computer", and "Shut Down All", in that order. I tap the second option, and my Windows 7 operating system gives me its usual farewell screen and powers down, and the monitor automatically turns itself off once the computer is fully powered down.

Heading down the stairs to head into my kitchen, I open the refrigerator up to see if I've got anything left that's worth cooking that'll fit my appetite this afternoon. My eyes are quite disappointed at what they see when they peer inside - a few strips of bacon inside its mashed up and deflated plastic bag, several heads of lettuce and carrots, a few bottles of 99-cent Coca-Cola, Seagram's, and Cherry Sprite that are all half-drunk, and one last unopened package of Ham and American Cheese Lunchables.

Sometimes I ask myself if I'll ever graduate from having super kiddie tastes. And every time I do, I always tell myself, nope, not happening.

It's not like anyone else lives here, so why should I care what the contents of my fridge look like? The only person who's ever going to look into it on a regular basis is me.

Still, this isn't necessarily a good stock to make lunch out of, unless I make some weird fusion cuisine stuff that I honestly don't want to do. And I already ate two Lunchables yesterday because I was feeling too lazy to go out and buy groceries after the shitshow I trudged through during work, so eating that last one is out of the question, simply because I like variety in my life, more than I like being lazy. Talk about inadequate reasons for motivation...

I check my rice cooker. Purple rice, mixed with cooked slices of mushrooms inside. I've been putting in efforts to make my diet healthier over the years - maybe it's a side effect of growing older, but I can't confirm - and part of the efforts have been dedicated to expanding my rice intake from just plain old white rice to other types of rice. One recipe I saw online suggested mixing in mushrooms that can cook along with the rice, and since I like mushrooms well enough, I did just that, and I don't have a single regret since. So I do have plenty of rice, and when I check the cupboard right above my rice cooker, there's a few stubby shakers of furikake, or rice seasoning. I've lived entire days off nothing but rice and furikake before, so pulling the trigger on this is trivially easy for me, but I resist. I'll be a proper adult and go buy some goddamn groceries so that I don't have to feel like a downright degenerate who lives on nothing but Lunchables, rice with furikake, and Cherry Sprite.

With this in mind, I swipe my hand from left to right in front of my chest again, and the set of four panels pop up again. This time, I tap the panel on the far left, which has a simple calendar icon on it, and while the other panels shimmer away as usual, this panel rises up slightly and drops down another list of panels - which holds some eleven more panels that drape all the way down to the floor. It's like clicking on the full menu on the start button of a Microsoft Windows operating system. Only cooler, I suppose.

I tap another panel that says "Agenda", and that, too, opens up another, thankfully much tinier list of panels, only three this time, which say "Reminders", "Notes", and "Shopping List". The specificity amuses me. I tap "Shopping List", and everything goes away, in favor of one empty panel that floats before me, waiting for my command.

"Grocery shopping. We need...let's see..." I open my fridge back up again. "Swiss cheese, barbecue sauce, garlic, clovers, onions, apples, peaches, bananas, Chipotle ribs, ham, samgyupsal, short ribs, and kimchi."

The panel records everything I say, and when I'm done, I tap the panel again, and it blinks in confirmation and sweeps itself away, bringing the previous panel back up. I take both hands this time and swipe them shortly together, and the panel list squeezes itself in and disappears, shimmering out of sight. I glance back into my fridge, and in the bottom shelf of the right fridge door, I spy my half-consumed bottle of Sayuri.

I squeeze my hand, and the recording panel pops up again.

"And Sayuri," I add and the panel blinks again in confirmation before disappearing again.

This morning's work was busy, so I head downstairs to my garage to open the door up so that I can reach my mailbox - mail comes by at ten in the morning every day, give or take half an hour - it depends on the driver and how much mail they're carrying, really. It's convenient, though, since I can just make lunch and check my mailbox while it's cooking and come back up to sort the mail while eating. Today, I have been able to enjoy no such luxury, but mail is important, especially for my business, so it's not like I have a choice.

It's another beautiful day out here in Southern California. An everlasting, uplifting blue sky marred only slightly but artistically with streaks of white feathers that we humans like to call clouds, the sun beaming down radiantly as can be. I nod hello to my next door neighbor, a very kind, elderly black man who loves to spend nice and quiet afternoon days on the driveway of his townhouse unit sitting on a porch chair and reading either the newspaper or a book on Sundays in one hand with a bottle of Angry Orchard's in the other - or in the porch chair's cup holder. He used to work for Raytheon, retired now - we've had a couple of pleasant conversations before about defense systems and what the United States is working on next; myself being somewhat of a military technologies enthusiast, it's obvious that the two of us share a common interest worth talking about together.

Closing the mailbox cover and pushing it up, making sure to set the little red flag that's standing up against the mailbox down, I walk back into my garage while sorting through the letters. Since I'm already dressed to go out, I'll just sort the mail right here and put them down on the stairs just past my door so that I'll remember to take them up with me back to my office.

The last letter catches my eye - specifically, the seal stamped boldly and almost menacingly on the front. The seal itself is so big that the delivery address - that is, _my_ address - is literally squeezed along the very right of the letter in handwriting. I recognize both of them, the seal and the handwriting. This is from the Chaldea Security Organization...or just Chaldea for short.

I now feel bad for the USPS guy, and everyone else who had to handle this letter. With a few exceptions, most members of well-established magical lineages and families aren't all _that_ acclimated to modern culture. Olga's, well...just the same way, I guess.

Leaning against the shotgun door of my Mercedes E-300 Sedan, I set the other letters and catalogues aside on the hood of my car to open this one from Chaldea and read it.

* * *

_Olga-Marie Animusphere  
Chaldea Security Organization Headquarters  
Dated 17th April, 2017 A.D._

_Dear Mr. Chang Gyun Augustus Il,_

_I currently write to inform you of dire news - Dr. Romani Archaman and his team has informed me that through SHIVA, they have detected the imminent development of an S-Class singularity in your immediate vicinity. While details about this singularity are still being researched by Dr. Archaman and his team, we can provide several general details for you now: this singularity should be enough to cover an area that occupies not only your current town of residence of Tierra del Illamas, but also the adjacent several towns of Nelson, Archibrod, and Watson Estates, and the southern half of the major city of Los Angeles. And as expected of an S-Class singularity, you must be prepared to fight Wanderers, along with possible Rogues._

_It is for these reasons that, upon the authority of the Animusphere Family, I have authorized the deployment of Team A Leader Matthew Kyrielight and have dispatched her to rendezvous with you on the early afternoon of 19th April, 2017. For the purposes of this assignment, she carries in her possession the Guardian Heroic Spirit Summoning System, or the 'FATE' device. I strongly recommend that you prepare for her arrival by completing the steps necessary to revise your current magical position as a 'Master'. Once you have rendezvoused with her, immediately complete a contract with her so that she may be able to assume her Demi-Servant status and begin working under you as your Servant and activate FATE._

_I am under the assumption that you are familiar with the FATE device and system; if not, please refer to Ms. Kyrielight for advice on its use. And having taken your current living circumstances into consideration, I have also decided that you will easily be able to accommodate the Heroic Spirits you summon as Servants through FATE and thus will not be providing you with financial support, but Chaldean reinforcements are on standby at your disposal, should you deem it necessary. Again, please refer to Ms. Kyrielight for further details about this matter._

_For your convenience, please allow Ms. Kyrielight to handle all after-action reports; for this assignment, I would rather you focus on the assignment's objectives at hand, for the scale and threat of it are too great to take lightly. And speaking of objectives, I will inform Ms. Kyrielight of new and updated objectives as we continue to monitor the singularity's conditions, and she will relay them to you for you and your Servants to complete. Should you have any inquiries, please first direct them to Ms. Kyrielight; she should be able to handle most of them, and if not, please contact Dr. Archaman or Ms. Da Vinci._

_Your rendezvous location and time with Ms. Kyrielight are listed below the signature. As this is the first time she is traveling to the West Coast of the United States, please make sure to meet her in a timely fashion._

_Sincerely,_

_Olga-Marie Animusphere  
2nd Chaldeas Security Organization President_

* * *

April 19th...would be today. Talk about a sudden development. I'm not reading the script for an anime, am I? And I _just_ finished Youjo Senki, too. Good anime, by the way, ten out of ten would recommend.

Sighing a little, I fold up the letter. I immediately recognize the address - it's at a big recreational park in the adjacent town - more like city - of Nelson called Nelson Park...surprise surprise. I understand why they would pick that place, since it's a big open area where you won't look suspicious at all just hanging out by yourself, since lots of people meet there anyways for weekly sporting games like pickup basketball, soccer, tag/flag football, or baseball, besides the rest of the ton of people who go visit the park simply to have picnics or take walks along the park's extensive walking paths. The problem is that Nelson Park is actually surprisingly big, in no small part due to the hills that divide the park more or less into three almost distinct sections that could all be parks in their own rights.

Not that that's going to be a problem at all in the first place. I just like to think about stuff...contemplate why things are the way they are. I'm well aware that my constant thinking has made some people I know very angry in the past - and one of them just happens to be the one who's penned this letter I've just read.

Then it seems that my agenda for today's been set in stone for me, which honestly is something of a relief. What's going to come _after_ that won't be. Another singularity? It hasn't been that long since I handled another one further up north, specifically in Northern California. Had to take a week off work to go handle that, and with no compensation from Chaldea because Olga's the biggest tight-ass in the world when it comes to both the Chaldean treasury and the Animusphere family fortune. It's not even the pile of work that I found stacked up electronically in my office, waiting for me when I returned home from that previous singularity that pisses me off, it's the fact that the leader of this organization that employs me as a contractual mage, who not only is extremely wealthy on her own as a successful spokesperson on the subject of global magic propagation to the various first-world countries around the globe but also is the heir of one of the most influential and richest families on the face of the planet, won't send me a fucking check for a week's worth of lost income. And this isn't supposed to be some kind of anti-patrician commentary about how the 1% always hoard their money, I just think Olga is an asshole for drafting me for a singularity that isn't even in my area _and_ refuses to compensate me for lost time at my own personal line of business, beyond my monthly contract of employment with Chaldea, simply because she cited my drafting as "justified in the context of an imminent S-Class singularity".

Which means she probably won't compensate me for what's about to happen here, too, but I guess I wouldn't mind that _too_ much, since it's right in my own town of residence. I'll just have to remember not to get her a quart of Häagen-Dazs if and when I get summoned to Chaldea.

I'm ranting now. And I do that a lot...to myself. Normally that'd be a problem, but I've gotten pretty good at keeping my rants to myself and not bothering other people with them. Partially because usually, for about three hundred and sixty five days of the year, I don't have anyone to rant _to_. It's better that way, though, honestly.

I check the time - it is now roughly a quarter past one, and the time of the rendezvous is scheduled for two o'clock. I've got some time, so since I'm going to be meeting with Miss Kyrielight, it's probably a good idea to tidy up and at least make an effort to look presentable - she is, after all, one of Chaldea's most trusted and most valued employees, and to make a bad impression on her would mean an almost-certain pay cut on my contract, despite my contract not expiring until the last day of the year. Damn sub-clauses...sometimes I wonder if being a businesswoman wouldn't suit Olga's career a little bit better.

I head back upstairs, not bothering to shut my garage door, since this town that I live in, Tierra del Illamas, is one of the safest and wealthiest towns per capita in the States, most certainly along the West Coast. I live in a townhouse unit that's practically in the center of our gated townhouse complex, and should there ever be someone suspicious snooping around, I'll know. I like taking care of my neighbors - it's a habit that I've developed quite well over the years...one of the things I'm always proud of. Is it weird that I don't think of myself as a particularly altruistic individual? Well, then again, mages in general are just weird people to begin with...many of them, that is.

Taking about fifteen minutes, I quickly shower and change my outfit - some casual black pants with plenty of pockets, a light, plain white shirt that says "WE, THE PEOPLE, THE MACHINE, AND THE BROKEN" in slanted, capitalized black letters, and a white hoodie jacket that has the kanji 滅 in light red on the back. I also don some black fingerless gloves that's starting to fray at the ends of the finger outlets, and I put on a black snapback with a picture of Samuel L. Jackson on the top of the visor and white letters outlined with red that say "SAY WHAT AGAIN!" on the front. Briefly stepping into my bathroom to give my appearance a quick lookover, I brush my short-ish bangs apart and fix my cap so that it's perfectly centered on my head.

I've only ever heard of Miss Matthew Kyrielight. Other than the unusual discrepancy between her gender and her name, I have heard of nothing but good things about her. A talented human who obtained through the Grand Order incident a year ago the power to become a Demi-Servant, a unique cross between a human and a servant - a unprecedented phenomenon that puts her in, well, a unique position among the mages of the world all on its own. Even without this peculiar quirk, she is apparently a very hard worker, selfless and unfaltering, and most importantly, tested by trials of fire, pain, and suffering. But, like I said, I've never actually seen her in person, not even so much as a photo of her - I'm sure this is to protect her identity from potential rival magic organizations throughout the world who wish to "employ" her talents for various _other_ goals and ends.

They say that it is always a great honor and privilege for anyone who is fortunate enough to meet her, let alone work with her for an assignment. I'll hold my judgment until I actually meet her for myself - but at least the prospects are looking good. I know what it feels like to have to meet with people whom you already know you're not going to get along well with, and truth be told - that shit sucks. Depends on the people, though, to be fair.

I hit the light and stop at the top of the stairs of my three-story townhouse unit, looking around on this top floor at the bedrooms here. Admittedly the details given to me on Olga's letter aren't very...well, specific, since I don't know how many Heroic Spirits whom I'll be summoning as my Servants will show up in the first place. This place has three rooms, the master bedroom and two smaller guest rooms, and I'm using the master bedroom as both my office and my bedroom. I would have preferred to use one of the smaller rooms, since I'm one of those very weird people who like smaller, more confined places as living quarters, but the efficient monster in me that prioritizes efficiency over all else as much as possible has turned me to the dark side with this issue and has compelled me to put my office and my bedroom together into one room, since it can easily accommodate the space I need for both - plus, it even comes with its own bathroom, which is equipped with a dedicated shower stall rather than a bathtub. So as far as the rooms are concerned, I can only accommodate two Servants, and after that, well, I suppose it'll be a fight for who gets to sleep on the floor and who gets to sleep on the couch. There could be a very real chance that I'll have to invest in another new home entirely just to be able to provide adequate living quarters for the Servants who'll be showing up...and it'll definitely complicate matters as time goes on, assuming more Servants join us to participate in this upcoming singularity.

Heading down the stairs all the way down to the garage, with the keys to my Mercedes already in the left pocket of my black pants, my phone in my right, and my wallet in the big pocket on my right pants sleeve, I slide into the driver's seat, start the engine with a simple push of a button, and back my car out of the garage, pressing a button on the garage door opener device clipped to the right foldable visor to shut the door, and wave goodbye to my neighbor, who waves back.

Now that I think about it, I've never asked for his name. And even more weirdly, he's never asked for mine. How interesting.

* * *

The heavy electric guitars of Mick Gordon blast from the stereo of my car as I cruise down the main street to get to Nelson Park. Being a weekday, and at this time, traffic is great, with the only obstacles to a smooth, continuous drive being the traffic lights and intersections. It's probably really weird to other people when they realize that some metalhead is blasting heavy rock from a _Mercedes_ , but I've seen stranger things. I've got my mind on other thoughts to begin with, like why Olga, to this day, doesn't believe in modern human technologies concerning instant communication. That letter she sent, she could have easily just sent me an email instead and given me more days to prepare for Miss Kyrielight's arrival. Not that my house is a complete mess - I'm not clean freak with OCD about always keeping everything tidy, but it's a good feeling knowing that I live and work in a home that isn't completely fucking trashed. One of my childhood friends whom I've known since technically elementary school lives like a slob, and I don't envy him whatsoever. But returning to Olga, she just refuses to do it. They know my email address, I've seen it specifically registered in their records when I asked them to show me the last time I was there, but...mages. Especially those from the big families, the "one-percenter" families, as I half-jokingly like to call them. At the very least, I'm grateful that Olga sent that letter through international priority mail, otherwise there would've been no way for me to know this, and I'm not exactly confident that Miss Kyrielight has any of my contact information, and in such a case, it would not surprise me at all if that were due to Olga's classic negligence of providing a dispatched Chaldean employee with adequate contact information, because she always assumes that everyone knows each other in Chaldea - which couldn't be any more wrong. Being the President of Chaldea, one could say that she's too _busy_ working on other crap and tending to her own daily agenda to really sit down and get a firm grasp of just how huge of an organization Chaldea has truly become.

And I don't expect her to any time soon. Disappointing, but...not worth blowing my brains out over. Some things, maybe, but not this one.

I drive into the positively _massive_ parking lot of Nelson Park - the park designers certainly had good foresight to give the park ample parking, given the size of this park. Take a shot every time I say the word "park" - and I'd laugh at myself if my own last name were Park, too. As it's still mid-afternoon, there aren't that many people here, so I help myself to a spot right next to the park, nearest to the two baseball fields that face each other in perpendicular fashion. I get out and lock the doors to my car, crossing over a strip of grass to step onto the sidewalk as my Mercedes beeps once to confirm my lock. I've already checked the time through the digital clock on the top of my car's dashboard, which would be 1:52pm. Meaning that, in order for me to not be late, I would have roughly eight minutes to search for and locate Miss Kyrielight. Enlightening math, let me tell ya.

Eight minutes is clearly not nearly enough time to search the _entire_ park, not one of this size, anyway. As much as I like doing things the good old-fashioned way, these circumstances call for some extra assistance. I haven't sensed anyone with a magical signature in my detectable vicinity, which means that if Miss Kyrielight is indeed already here and waiting for me, she's disguising herself _very_ well as an ordinary human being.

Which shouldn't be surprising, if you think about it. She was, at one point, human. Or so they say, at least.

I almost lazily raise my right hand and snaps my fingers. The crack that gets produced due to the sharp friction I generate between the flats of my middle finger and thumb reverberates, sending sound waves in all directions around me, and I listen for any magical frequencies that bounce back. And sure enough, almost instantly, one does bounce back - meaning that she is very close to me. I face the direction in which my snap points me, and there, at a bench about, let's say, forty meters to my left, along the sidewalk, sits a girl with neck-length light purple hair with monstrously long bangs that hide her glasses, allowing only her left eye, which is also purple, though a richer shade of it, to peek out and down at her lap, on which a _very_ long-haired pet that clearly is not a species indigenous to normal animal existence. It looks like a cat, though. Just with a huge mane, a tail that seems to be made out of nothing but locks of flowing white hair, and with rabbit ears that turn gradient blue up towards the tips and magenta innards.

It's also wearing a capelet. How fancy.

Finding my person of interest, I walk over to her. And as I do, once I get within, say, twenty meters of her, she looks up slowly, straight up at me.

And that's when I realize one thing, and just one more thing.

Like me, she wears glasses.


	2. Matthew Kyrielight

**Chapter 2: Matthew Kyrielight**

* * *

The moment I stop before Miss Kyrielight, the capelet-donning cat/dog/whatever kind of pet it really is stands up from her lap, gazing up at me, and before long, it says one thing to me, and one thing only:

"Fou!"

As if it wasn't insanely obvious that this creature is not a normal animal, I can sense a tiny amount of magical energy resonating from it. I get the sense that, while it certainly possesses potential for a much larger magical energy capacity, it's somehow spent much of it on something else. So it's one of those magical beasts that I've heard of.

I clear my throat so that we can begin talking.

"Miss Kyrielight?" I ask the short purple-haired girl before me. She also has on a white hoodie jacket with gray sleeves and bottoms, but what she wears underneath is certainly unique: a sleeveless black pleated dress shirt with a folded white collar, adorned with a red two big dark gray diamonds intersecting one another along the bottom. I see no sign of any pants or dress or skirt, even - she literally only has black pantyhose on, with a high fiber content that makes it very dense and dark. There's a fashion term for that, but since I obviously don't wear pantyhose or have no reason to go near them at all, the term isn't coming to me at the moment.

The moment I speak her name, her blank expression suddenly warms up, and the corners of her lips rise up to a pleasant but professional smile. Fou steps off her lap onto the bench so that Miss Kyrielight can stand up and greet me properly.

"Mr. Il, I presume?" she speaks, in a perfect American accent. Her voice is crisp, eager, and pleasant - if this were an interview, she'd've already scored big points, since her voice is just perfect for white-collar job interviews.

"That would be me. You can just call me Augustus, or August if you prefer."

"August..." Miss Kyrielight smiles again. "...I...I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but...I think it'll take me some getting used to, to have to address you as a month of the year."

"That's rich, coming from a girl whose first name is 'Matthew'."

Miss Kyrielight just blinks at me for a few seconds.

"...um...d-did no one tell you...?" she asks me hesitantly.

"Tell me what?"

"That...um...my...my name isn't 'Matthew'," she explains slowly.

"...then if it's not Matthew, what is it?"

"Mash."

It's my turn to blink back at her. I have to raise my hand up to my nose so that I can pinch in between my eyebrows, because I'm having a hard time processing this. Have I been working too much the past week? Or am I _actually_ a confirmed lightweight, for me to get tilted off just half a bottle of Sayuri?

"Excuse me, I don't...think I heard that right. _What_ did you say your name was?" I ask for a repeat.

"Mash. Mash Kyrielight."

I set my hand on her left shoulder, which startles her a little.

"Miss Kyrielight," I sigh slowly.

"Y-Yes...?" she stammers. Her reaction is understandable, since I'm putting her on the spot right now, but trust me, this is for a good reason, I swear.

"I regret to inform you that due to my own personal guidelines of human nomenclature, I insist that I be able to continue to call you Matthew," I say.

"...but...did you not just say that...it was a little weird for me to - "

"Ignore that."

"I-Is there a particular reason for...for this...?"

I take my hand off her shoulder so that I'm not making her feel any more awkward than she needs to be.

"Because I feel very, _very_ sorry for you, that your name, out of all the things your name could have been, just _had_ to be something like _Mash."_

Poor Miss Kyrielight just stands there, not knowing what to make of my insistent behavior over something so goddamn trivial.

"...well...if...if you insist, then...given our circumstances, there would be...no reason for me to dissuade you," she mumbles, fidgeting cutely. "It's just that, um...I...I might need some time to adjust, and...and respond to your calls whenever you address me as 'Matthew' instead of 'Mash'..."

"Good. Thank you, because otherwise I would be stuck with calling you 'Miss Kyrielight' for the rest of this assignment. And I'm not sure how much you'd prefer that over this."

"I-I take it that you don't...particularly like the name 'Mash'?"

"Because that's not a name. That's an action. As in, 'I mash potatoes'. That sort of thing." I shake my head. "I'm sorry, I dragged that out way longer than I needed to, it's just...I feel really awkward having to call you Mash all the time. I now realize that I would rather call you Matthew instead, because at least that's a proper name, even if it's originally meant for the other gender."

Matthew just gives me a very awkward chuckle, one that clearly betrays her initial sentiments about me. She _definitely_ thinks I'm gonna be another fucking weirdo who's going to be hard to work with. I know people enough to read their sentiments - I know what emotions sound and look like when conveyed through body language and conversational audio cues.

So I decide not to butcher our first meeting any further and straighten my back to get down to business.

"In any case, I hope your travels haven't been hard on you," I tell her. "Would you care for some lunch? Unless you've already eaten, of course."

"Ah...lunch...that..." Matthew blushes as she looks away shyly. At the mention of the word "lunch", Fou also bounds over to the edge of the bench closest to us, its ears perking up and keenly listening to all the next things we're about to say. "...that...would be lovely..."

"Haven't had much to eat lately?"

She shakes her head. "Miss Olga did not give us much spending money, because she believed that I would be able to rendezvous with you quickly..."

I groan aloud. "Fuck that bitch - doesn't even know anything about how the modern world works," I curse. "Sheltered bitch 'n a half, lemme tell ya. Oh well, it's good that you've survived until now, so as a celebration of sorts, I'll treat you."

"W-What would we be celebrating, may I ask?"

"You not dying of starvation."

"Ah...ahaha..."

I beckon to her to follow me, and we head back to my car. When she realizes which car is mine, Matthew lets out a small cry of amazement and hurries over.

"Ohhh...a luxury car!" she marvels with the most genuine excitement I've ever heard from a girl her age. "I've only ever seen Miss Olga and her aides drive around in these back at Chaldea. It must be nice, to be able to own one too..."

"It's just a car, though...and I don't technically _own_ it, I have it on lease."

Since the Mercedes works with a remote key, all I have to do is go right up next to my door so that my key can broadcast its signal to the car and tell it to unlock it, and the car unlocks itself for the two of us, with Matthew hopping in shotgun and Fou along with her to occupy her usual perch that is Matthew's lap. As I push the button to ignite the engine, Matthew continues to marvel, looking all around her and drinking in the atmosphere of sitting inside a Mercedes Benz sedan. And when I start pulling the car out of the parking lot, Matthew is fidgeting a lot, this time giddy with excitement and anticipation to this car ride.

"You like cars or something?" I ask her, since it's kind of impossible not to notice her pleasure of hitching a ride inside a car like this.

"Er...well...I don't think I am _partial_ to cars, necessarily, but...for some reason, it's just exciting to me whenever I ride in one like this, one that's supposed to be a luxury car..."

"It's not a luxury car. This is _far_ from a luxury car."

Matthew blinks at me. "Th-Then - what would a _real_ luxury car look like?"

"I don't know, I've never been in one."

Somewhat discouraged by my answer, Matthew nonetheless keeps her hype up as she head back down the main street so that I can take Matthew to one of my more favorite fast-food chains called Panda Express. For her, I have my music playing through Bluetooth through my phone turned off, since I can't imagine someone like Matthew taking a liking to industrial metal. Well, it's not like my phone's filled with nothing _but_ metal, I'm sure I've got some stuff that Matthew wouldn't mind listening to, but because I'm a good law-abiding citizen in the state of California, I choose not to fiddle with my phone while I'm in the middle of driving. I've also pulled down the windows, and both she and Fou seem to be enjoying the rapid breeze that pours into the car while I cruise back up the main street at some forty-five miles an hour, the legal speed limit for this street. I notice that Fou is acting just like a dog in a car with the window down - it's sticking its face out the window, letting its ears constantly whip back behind its head. With ears that long, I have to wonder if that won't hurt at all.

"Hey, Matthew, I know it's probably a little late to ask you this, but you don't have any luggage with you or anything?" I holler over at her to make sure that I'm heard over the whipping breeze.

"No, Senpai! Unless you count Fou as my luggage, which she is not!" she calls back.

"Huh. Since when was I your upperclassman?"

"Ah! I'm - I'm sorry!" Matthew puts her hands over her mouth for a moment. "I-It's a bad habit from before. I've...I've been trying my best to correct it for the sake of this assignment, but - but do forgive me if I suffer some lapses regarding it..."

"Bad habit, you say..."

"W-Well, it's just that...my previous Master...really was an upperclassman to me, so...it's what I called him, because he was Japanese."

She's probably referring to the Grand Order incident. And if the rumors I heard about it, particularly in regards to Matthew herself, are correct, then it should be in our best interest to just leave that topic alone.

"Are you fluent?" I ask, treading lightly on this subject. "If your previous Master was Japanese, then I could imagine you learning the language to communicate well with him."

"As a matter of fact, yes, I am fluent," she says. "Erm...speaking of which, you...are not Japanese, though? Your name is...of Eastern Asian origin, but I can tell it is not Japanese..."

"It's Korean," I correct her. "I'm Korean-American. But I can speak Korean, Chinese, and Japanese fluently, no problem."

"Oooh..." Matthew gives off that noise she makes when she's marveling at something. "That's amazing, Senpai. I-Is it alright for me to call you Senpai too?"

"Uhh...sure, yeah, I don't mind. I'm basically forcing you to let me call you Matthew, so...I guess with that, we're even."

"Okay!"

Matthew sounds way too happy about that.

* * *

"Ooooouuuhhh...!"

Damn, Matthew, back at it again, huh? Am I getting my dank memes right? What do you mean, I don't get a lifetime supply of fancy overpriced designer shoes?

We're now standing in line at the nearest Panda Express that I know in our area. There's a surprisingly long line here, it being barely quarter past two - normally it'd be longer later in the day. The only reason for this that I can imagine is maybe because more people than usual are having later lunches. In any case, even though I do say that the line is "long", given the fact that we can plainly see the food behind the glass, it's not really long at all. The sight of so much food freshly made and awaiting consumption, with the workers behind the counter at the kitchen that is free for the customers' viewing pleasure cooking up more orders of entrees and sides to meet demand, surely must be all terribly interesting to Matthew at the very least. I feel like I'm escorting around a sheltered rich family girl who's never been out in public doing pleb stuff and eating pleb food and is doing so for the first time in her life. While it's probably not true in Matthew's case, you still can't deny the fact that having a girl gawk at something like a fast-food chain is still a little odd, at least in the eyes of normal, non-magical human beings like everyone else in this place.

"Senpai, um...w-what should I get? Everything looks so good to eat..." Matthew prances about a little once our turn is up, though we still have to wait for the employees to take care of the customers ahead of us first. I take a cursory glance at the entrees laid out in a rough L-shape formation, behind the glass next to the counter against which we stand.

"This place is pretty famous for their orange chicken, so that's always a go-to choice," I advise her. "And how much can you eat, or do you think you can eat?"

"Um...well, I-I don't...want to be hard on your money, so - "

"My money is the least of our concerns right now. Can you eat a lot?"

Matthew shyly nods. "Y-Yes..."

"Then we're getting you a bigger plate, and you can order three entrees instead of two. So pick whatever three you'd like."

"Hello, welcome to Panda Express!" a Chinese girl wearing a Panda Express uniform greets us loudly and cheerfully with a cutely thick Cantonese accent. I've talked with her a few times, she's actually a foreign exchange student who's working here part-time during the spring semester. You would think that, for a "Chinese" fast food chain, they'd have more ethnic Chinese employees, but in actuality, here in Southern California, that's kind of a rarity. They'd be managers, sure, but just regular employees like her? It's not as commonplace down here as you might think. "What would you like?"

"S-Senpai? Um..." Matthew turns to me quickly, eyeing me to bail her out, since she doesn't know what she's being asked.

"Bigger plate for her, please," I order for her, and the Chinese girl, who recognizes me with a big ol' smile, nods and pulls out a normal two-entree plate and scribbles with a Sharpie marker on the lid, indicating that it's a three-entree order. I turn to Matthew now. "You can handle the rest, just listen to her."

Matthew nods and goes around selecting her food items - half and half, which she's heard the customer ahead of us pick, with orange chicken, honey walnut shrimp, and mushroom chicken. All solid choices. Meanwhile, Fou is walking along with Matthew down at her feet, her presence hidden so that she can enter the premises without getting thrown out for looking like a pet. I go with chow mein, teriyaki chicken with teriyaki sauce on top, and honey walnut. Normally I'd get orange chicken too, but both the teriyaki chicken and the honey walnut look too damn good to pass up.

It would seem that I've forgotten to tell Matthew to specify that our orders are supposed to be a combined order, as I find her again in a shy panic when I reach the cashier, gesturing weakly to me for help. How she's even managed to travel all the way here to Southern California without any money is beyond me, but...you know, mages.

"We're paying together," I tell the cashier, who nods and grabs my food too to add to the total. "Oh, and two small drinks, please, for here."

"You got it," the cashier replies, swiftly and expertly pulling off two tall cups from the tall stack of fountain cups with the kind of fluidity that only a cashier who's been working a job like this for months and months is able to do. "Your total's nineteen dollars and forty-seven cents."

I hand him my credit card to pay for it all, after swiping it, the cashier hands it back to me, along with our food. I pass Matthew hers, with the third entree box standing on top of her plate, and we navigate our way over to a nearby high table that can seat two or three, four if you really try.

"What kind of drink would you like? Or do you want to check out the drinks for yourself?" I ask Matthew, under the assumption that she won't be familiar with how the soda fountain machine works.

"You can, um...get me anything," she smiles back. Clearly she's more focused on the food in front of her.

"Oh, and wait until I come back, I'll bring some forks, since they don't give them to you."

I fetch our plastic utensils first, then return to the soda machine to fill up our cups. I like this particular Panda Express joint because it's the only place that I know of that features a Brisk Peach dispenser, and for some reason I like the taste of it much better over the bottled Brisks that you might find in convenience stores and the like. I figure Matthew probably won't be used to the experience of drinking soda, so I pour the both of us some Peach Brisk and return. I find Matthew already digging in before me, with Fou sniffing a piece of honey walnut shrimp with great interest before picking it up with its teeth and eating it, right out of Matthew's plate. Hopefully no one around us is watching and accidentally sees a piece of shrimp disappear into thin air, and just in case, I look around, but we're sitting in the far corner, near the restrooms, so it's very unlikely that anyone's going to be watching us.

Besides, even if they do, I'd know.

"I-I'm sorry..." Matthew apologizes when I sit down - more like sit _up,_ given how tall these high chairs are. "I was just so hungry..."

"No worries, help yourself," I smile back. "I haven't had lunch yet too, and all things considered, this is kind of a late lunch, so..."

We spend the next ten or so minutes doing nothing but eating. Fou walks over daintily on the table, as the table isn't very big at all, making sure not to accidentally tip either of our drinks over as she swipes a piece of teriyaki chicken from me, not that I mind. Fou must be as hungry as Matthew is. I watch Fou chew on her piece of chicken, and I can't help but wonder - if Fou can eat honey walnut shrimp, and then teriyaki chicken, and then now a mouthful of mushrooms from Matthew's plate, would she be able to eat literally anything? An image of a goat pops into my mind as I think this. I'm not exactly sure what Fou would think if it knew that I was likening her to a _goat_.

Though, Fou does come over and tap my arm with its paw, and she gives me another one of her "Fou!" calls, and this time she sounds more insistent. "Fou, fou!" it says.

"She's asking if she can get some water," Matthew translates for her.

"Oh, yeah, sure, I'll get some."

Hoping that this isn't some elaborate plan to get me off my food so that she can bury her face in it, I leave and ask the cashier for a water cup, which he gives to me, and I return with a plastic cup of water. I do catch Fou nabbing a piece of walnut from my honey walnut shrimp, but it seems like she's spared my plate. Matthew gestures for me to hand her the cup, unable to speak because she's got a mouthful of orange chicken and fried rice, and I hand it carefully to her so that she can help Fou drink.

"Thank you for the food," Matthew says finally, after finishing. I glance over - she's completely demolished her plate, as there is absolutely nothing left, save for a few grains of cold fried rice that Fou is busy lapping up to _completely_ clean the plate out. I nod back, having long since finished mine too, as I'm a very fast eater.

"Hope you liked it," I nod back. "American food is...pretty heavy, so...I know I should've warned you _before_ we started eating, but I guess it's a little late for warnings now..."

Matthew shakes her head. "It's fine, Senpai. The food was delicious, and that by itself is much more than I could've asked for."

Such humbleness, much wow.

I close the lid on my plate and take sip from my fountain drink.

"The letter I received from Olga told me that you would provide the details for this assignment," I begin, bringing our topic of conversation back to the task at hand. "As expected, the letter itself didn't contain much substance, so it seems like I'll be relying on you for the majority of the information I'll need to handle this job."

"Ah, yes, of course," Matthew says quickly, straightening her back and sitting up at attention in her chair as Fou makes itself comfortable on the table, lying down in between the two plates. "Did you bring that letter with you?"

"Uh, no, but I remember everything that it said."

"Okay. Um...I guess, for starters, what do you know about the singularity so far?"

"Only that it's S-Class, and that it'll cover my town and the towns around here, including this one. And half of the major city up north. Other than that, it seems like this'll be a big deal."

"That's correct, this will be the biggest singularity ever since last year's Grand Order incident," Matthew nods in agreement. "It is very fortunate that it's predicted to spawn in your territory, Senpai."

I take another sip from my drink. "How long do you think this'll last?" I wonder aloud.

"We don't know. S-Class singularities typically average in duration anywhere from three months to five _years_ ," Matthew shakes her head.

"Shit."

"I'm sorry, Senpai."

"Someone's gotta be, but I can assure you right now that it's not you."

Matthew just awkwardly smiles, unsure of how to reply to my words. I know what she's thinking - she doesn't know whether or not she should thank me for that.

"Y-You don't mean Miss Olga, do you...?" she asks timidly.

"I'm tempted, but for now, no."

"I-I'm sure Miss Olga would appreciate that."

"I don't think she gives a damn."

I set down my drink.

"As for the whole Master initiation, we can do that when we return. For now, I'd rather get the rest of the finer details straight first."

"Okay. Is there anything you want to ask about?"

"The Summoning system. I've heard of it, but since I've personally never used it before, I don't know the ins and outs of it. How does it all work? And how does it work in the context of our assignment?"

Matthew clears her throat to speak extensively. "First, you would need to convert your position to that of a Master, because in order for me to activate FATE, it requires a confirmed Master to which it will summon Heroic Spirits as Servants. FATE uses a special magic resource called 'Saint Quartz', which are gem-like magical entities that possess a strong magical signature that can be used by FATE to call upon the wills of Heroic Spirits. This is what they look like."

Fishing through her pockets, Matthew produces a small tin that's about the size of a small wallet, opening it up to show me its contents. Inside sit, neatly placed in their own individual little spots, a set of thirty rainbow-colored spiky gems that could easily be mistaken for candy.

"Chaldea has provided us with an initial set of thirty Saint Quartz," she explains, closing the lid once I've seen it. "They intend for us to use it as Summoning material so that we can get started on building a party with which to handle our first set of objectives during the first stage of this singularity."

I narrow my eyes a little. "Implying that these Saint Quartz things have uses other than Summoning," I observe aloud.

"Yes, but only one other use. And that is to be able to fully revive a team of Servants in a defined area if they are defeated."

"Wow, sounds pretty strong."

"It is. Combined with the fact that Saint Quartz is a resource that cannot be easily replenished due to its magical nature, Saint Quartz are very valuable and cannot be squandered, so while you, as a Master, will have full control over how you wish to spend your Quartz, I advise that you use them very wisely."

"Got it."

"Of course, you can always contact Miss Olga, and for a...small...fee, she will be more than happy to supply you with more."

"...why did you say the word 'small' really softly?"

Matthew looks away, making sure not to make eye contact with me.

"How much is it for Quartz?" I ask, figuring that this information could be useful later on, depending on what our circumstances begin to look like. "Is it for a small loan of a million dollars?"

"...i-if...if my knowledge of current monetary exchange rates is still accurate, then...I believe...it would be...eighty dollars for, um...a hundred and forty Quartz..."

I facepalm.

"So much for Quartz being a valuable resource," I roll my eyes.

"B-But you still must not use them unwisely!" she insists.

"Yeah, I understand that. You just made it sound like if I spent all of them, it'd be the end of the world."

"But...that wasn't my intention..."

I wave my hand to brush that topic of Quartz away. "What else do I need to know besides the Quartz?"

"Ah, yes, um...when we begin the Summoning process, FATE will process the Quartz into one of two results: the first are what are known as Craft Essences, sources of magic power that, while they may fail to call upon Servants, can be equipped to other Servants so that they may utilize the power that is vested in them. They will take the form of cards, for convenience's sake."

Frowning heavily, I gaze straight into Matthew's purple eyes. This sounds a lot like a lottery.

"This is a goddamn lottery, by the sounds of it," I observe aloud again.

"W-Well...it...it isn't...supposed to be treated like one..." Matthew murmurs shyly.

"Then I'm assuming the other result is Servants?"

"Yes, if not a Craft Essence, then it will summon a Servant."

"And let me guess, the Servant we summon is gonna be completely random, too."

"Y-Yes..."

"So it _is_ a goddamn lottery."

Matthew averts her gaze. As irritated as I'm starting to feel, I decide not to push the issue, since it's not like Matthew here's the reason why this system is the way it is. At least, not that I'm aware of.

"Then the important thing to ask here is how bad the ratio of Craft Essences to Servants is," I ask instead. "So in other words, let's say if I were to do the summoning thing a hundred times. Out of a hundred, uh, let's just call them 'rolls' for now, how many servants can I expect to summon?"

Matthew fidgets uncomfortably in her seat. Oh boy...

"...we...we don't know," Matthew mumbles. "It's completely random. We...have no control over what FATE decides to summon."

"Whoever worked on Quality Control for FATE should get fucking fired."

"Um...if I recall correctly, Dr. Archaman was the one who developed FATE..."

"Shit, can't fire him, can we."

"No, that'd...that'd be a bad idea..."

"Fine. But I'm getting the sense that summoning actual Servants is gonna be real tough."

"Historically, FATE has always been...stringent on bestowing Servants."

"Then I guess I'll end up with a whole fucking pile of Craft Essences with no idea who to give it to, huh."

"Well, there are times when FATE fails to summon anything at all."

Great, this really is the California lottery.

"So they expect us to use an unreliable system through which to obtain Servants, in dealing with an S-Class singularity that's about to go down God knows how soon," I mull irritably, chomping on the top of my straw as I sip up some more Brisk. "I think they might be overestimating me as a mage."

"But you are a...a very powerful mage, according to Miss Olga."

"How would she know, she's never seen me fight."

"But the reports from the singularities that you handled in the past..."

I conveniently ignore this and talk straight over her.

"Then how many summons will thirty quartz be enough for?" I ask, quickly changing the topic.

"Exactly ten summons. Normally, the conversion rate is three quartz for a single summon, but the recommended method is to gather up thirty quartz and use them all at once to summon, because it appears that FATE can process the magical energy provided by thirty quartz more effectively, and thus FATE can guarantee at least one four-star Craft Essence."

"Four-star? Those things have ranks?"

"Er, yes. Both craft essences and Heroic Spirits have rankings that go from one to five stars."

"So I'm assuming that these thirty-rolls, as I'm probably gonna start callin' 'em, is the way to go."

"Yes, Chaldea has recommended this method for its own Masters under its employment."

I ponder this. Knowing this, it sounds like there's pretty much no point to rolling with only three quartz at a time if I can guarantee that I can get at least _something_ out of a thirty-roll. But depending on how difficult it is to acquire quartz without having to pay Chaldea for more supplies, the question then becomes how easily I can accrue more on my own to be able to continue the summons without having to go the pay-to-win route. Because if it's very difficult to obtain quartz, like I said, there might be _some_ merit to yolo'ing the individual rolls on their own, if I'm impatient enough. But I'll reserve judgment until I know more about this system that sounds more and more and more absurd the more I think about it.

Which brings me to my next inquiry.

"So we know that if we run out of quartz, we can always have Chaldea to ship us some more, provided that we pay for them," I reiterate. "But I assume that there're also other ways to acquire quartz?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact," Matthew seems to beam a little now. "Once our contract is set and our commitment to this singularity is established, every week, Chaldea will send us three free quartz, one on the third day, and two on the seventh day. Certain mission objectives that Chaldea assigns us once they have more information about the singularity that we will be handling will yield quartz or Saint Quartz fragments, pieces that make up a quartz, as mission rewards, also sent by Chaldea, and you can put seven of the fragments together to make one quartz, and I believe the mission objectives that reward quartz fragments are also on a weekly rotation basis. And lastly, Servants whom you summon will have what is known as Bond Point Ratings, or simply Bond Levels for short. By increasing their Bond Levels to certain thresholds, they will automatically yield quartz with the magic energy that they exude upon reaching those thresholds."

I've already commented enough on the absurdity of Matthew's "official" name of Mash, so I think I won't waste her time with complaining about how the name "Bond Level" just sounds so goddamn terrible.

"There are also times when Chaldea will send over free Quartz as reinforcement supplies or in case of special events and occasions, so it is not as if they expect you to pay for any quartz. The FATE system is designed not to place any financial burdens on the mages contracted to serve as Masters."

"Why do I feel like that's an absolute lie."

"I-It isn't, though..."

I still don't look convinced just because a cute girl with glasses is telling me so. "I'll see for myself about that," I conclude with a bit of a sigh. "On a side note, I've been thinking, because it's clear that you haven't brought any luggage with you along, I'm guessing you'll need to buy stuff for your stay with me?"

"Stuff? Um...such as...?" Matthew looks a little confused.

"Clothes, toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner..." I list off some toiletries and other basic items that every household ought to have.

"Um...well...I...I don't... _need_ those things..." Matthew explains shyly. "You have heard about me, right, Senpai? That I'm a Demi-Servant."

"I've heard. But right now, you're in your human form...mostly. And in your human form, you don't have the traits of a Servant, meaning that you can't rely on magical energy to cleanse your body or do any other kind of physical bodily maintenance. Unless you plan on switching on and off every night to handle that."

"...that's...precisely what I _have_ been doing, though..."

I shrug. "A'ight, I was just making sure. Some girls really insist on doing stuff their way, so I felt the need to ask first."

"No, I-I understand. You're just trying your best to accommodate me. I appreciate it, I really do."

Normally whenever I hear someone saying these words, it's usually spoken in a sarcastic, passive-aggressive manner. It's actually quite refreshing to hear these words spoken with complete honesty.

"Then I guess we'll head back," I nod, sliding off my chair and picking up both my plate and Matthew's and heading out, tossing our trash away on the way. "Um, one more thing I _do_ wanna say, though."

"Yes?" Matthew replies, attentive as ever as we head back to my car and climb inside. Fou hops into the shotgun seat first and stands on the middle divider to let Matthew in after it.

"My place is a townhouse unit, and it's really only meant for a family of two to four," I say as I rev the engine. "So...if on the off-chance that we end up with a team of more than, say, two or three Servants, it's gonna get a little crowded."

"Ah. Well, I suggest that you look into other living quarters when the time comes for us to expand," Matthew advises.

"That makes it sound like we're gonna be stuck with a small party for a while."

"Well...that's...usually how it is, for the first couple of months."

"That so." Before I pull the car out of our space in the parking lot, I raise my hand over to Matthew. "Then under the assumption that we'll be stuck together for a long while, I look forward to workin' with you, Miss Kyrielight."

Matthew smiles and returns my handshake.

"The same to you, Senpai," she declares cheerily.


	3. Saber Lily

**Chapter 3: Saber Lily**

* * *

After an afternoon of grocery shopping and other small errand-running tasks like going to the post office to drop off some priority mail envelopes, we finally return home, and I pull into the driveway of the electronic gate of my townhouse community, reaching down into my ashtray to press the button on my remote gate opener to let us in. It's about five or so in the evening.

"So I heard from Olga that this should be your first time in the West Coast?" I ask Matthew, for the sake of conversation as I casually steer through the peaceful, empty road of our townhouse complex to get to my house.

"Ah, yes. I've never been to California, and I've, um, heard lots of good things about it," Matthew replies pleasantly. "So yeah...I was pretty excited to come. And I'm glad I've come, both Nelson and Tierra Del Llamas seem like very nice places to live."

"Well..." I hesitate, wondering if it's appropriate for me to bring up what she's been through, since I've heard enough about her previous work to have an idea. "...I think that, some of the more ghetto cities and towns aside, any town's a great place to live, compared to some of the ones you've been to."

Matthew just awkwardly chuckles. Meaning that I probably shouldn't have brought that up.

"But yeah, it's...this city's one of the nicest places in the state, to be perfectly honest," I say quickly. "It's expensive, but you pay for the quality of living here. Besides, if you're gonna live in a state like California, you just have to expect to pay more..."

"Is it cheaper to live in other states here in America?"

"Yeah, definitely. California's a high-population state, and while I'm not intimately familiar with the details of exactly why Cali's more expensive, it's pretty much common knowledge that it is. Other states that don't have as big of populations are typically cheaper in terms of overall living costs - like Colorado, for instance. But every state has its pros and cons - lots of people live in Texas, for example, where there's no state income tax, so that's appealing to a lot of people who're involved in business, for example."

"Oh, I see."

"Have you been to any other part of the United States? East Coast, maybe?"

"Yes, I have. I visited Boston once as the Head Representative of Chaldea for a minor mage's association meeting there, and Miss Olga tasked me to go to represent her."

"That sounds like she made you go because she didn't feel like it wasn't worth her time to go."

Again, another one of Matthew's I-can't-say-anything awkward chuckles.

"So how long were you there? Not long, right? Since it was only a mage's association meeting."

"I was actually there for a whole weekend."

"Oh, really? How was it?"

"It was really fun! We met inside this big convention center in Boston, and a lot of people were there too," Matthew recounts pretty excitedly. "A lot of those people were dressed up in all sorts of interesting clothes, there were a lot of booths selling merchandise and paraphernalia, and there were a lot of panels that were being hosted that talked about all kinds of interesting things."

My eyes get narrower and narrower the more and more she describes this meeting of a mages' association. Isn't that just an anime convention?"

"Matthew, just curious, but...what was the name of that mages' association meeting or whatever it was?" I ask slowly.

"Um...I believe it was called 'Anime Boston' or something like that, if I'm not mistaken..."

Bingo.

I hit my garage opener device as I take a right turn to pull into the smaller road that leads into my own small driveway. My elderly neighbor has since retired back into his home, though the window into their kitchen is open and I can hear his wife hollering about something - I think she's talking about cabbages, probably something related to dinner. I pull my Mercedes into the left, next to my other car, an old red Ford Expedition that I got at an excellent price off one of my business associates who was looking to replace it and figured that he might as well hand it off to me, the two of us being business partners for quite a while now.

"Oh, wow, you have two cars...?" Matthew remarks in wonder the moment the garage door opens to reveal the Ford.

"Yeah. This one I use just for errands and going around and maybe long-distance travel if I feel like driving, and that other one I use for business-related stuff, if I need to help my business partners and associates with loading some extra cargo they don't have space for."

"I see...um, will both of them fit...?"

"Yep."

I steer the Mercedes carefully up next to the Ford, making sure that there's enough space on Matthew's side so that she can get out. I do have to pull the car up practically right next to the end, the license plate almost grazing the wall, because there's this support beam on my left that blocks my door if I don't pull up all the way, and after I shut off the engine, we all get out and close the doors behind us.

"Um, if you need help with the groceries..." Matthew volunteers, approaching me as we both converge on the Mercedes' trunk.

"Sure, let's have you take...these bags..."

After opening up the trunk, I hand her some bags, which she carries with ease, since she's a Demi-Servant and all that, and since we can carry all the bags just between the two of us, I head in first to open the door and close the garage door behind me. I turn around to tell Matthew to take off her shoes, but she's already doing it without me telling her. I guess she's learned that somewhere else.

We climb upstairs and drop off our loads in the kitchen, where I immediately begin sorting the groceries and start putting them into the refrigerator while Matthew strays from the kitchen a little with Fou, looking around and taking in the atmosphere of my house.

"Matthew," I call from the kitchen. "I hope you're okay with ribs with rice and mushrooms for dinner tonight, that fine with you?"

"Yes!" I hear Matthew's footsteps hurry back to the kitchen upon my calling her, and sure enough, she pops her head around the doorframe first before entering. "Um...will you be cooking tonight?"

"What, can you cook too?" I ask while in the middle of placing the packet of mushrooms inside the veggies drawer in the fridge.

"Yes. I have confidence in cooking rice, miso soup, eggs...anything that is considered staple Japanese foods."

"You have a lot of experience with cooking Japanese food?"

"Yes. My previous master taught me."

"Cool. But don't worry, I'm already prepared to have to cook for you for the whole time you're here, so you don't have to if you don't want to - "

"Ahh - I, I can't have you cook for me _all_ the time!" Matthew frets in embarrassment, hurrying towards me next to the fridge. "I'd like to, um, cook for you too. Maybe it doesn't bother me as much now, but once we establish our contract and I officially become your Servant, it would be really disgraceful of me to not at least cook for you. It'd be absurd for a Master to cook for a Servant."

I shrug. "Suit yourself. If it's better with you, we can take turns cooking."

"Um, I'd be alright with that too. Do you need any help?"

"Nah, I'm okay. You can go relax, you're probably pretty tired from all the traveling and such, right?"

But Matthew shakes her head. "I'm fine, Senpai. Traveling doesn't affect me because of my Demi-Servant status."

Chuckling, I close the fridge door and pick up the plastic bags off the floor to tie them up and keep inside a drawer that's full of plastic bags that I get from grocery shopping that I reuse as trash bags for my wastebaskets and trash cans around the house. "Must be nice. Even if I'm a mage, I still get affected by travel fatigue. Just not as much as normal humans, though, but still."

Matthew gives me another one of those awkward smiles, like she's trying to cover up an emotion or two of some kind. She's getting easier and easier to read - which is good, since it tells me everything that I _shouldn't_ bring up with her.

"Then since I'll be on cookin' duty for tonight, when do you wanna eat?" I ask her. "'Cause I'm fine with eating whenever. Preferably sometime before eleven, though."

"Er, yes, of course..." Matthew blinks in response, as if having a hard time imagining why anyone in their right mind would ever contemplate eating dinner at eleven in the evening. "Um...I think...seven o'clock would be a good time?"

"In an hour, huh. A'ight - then lemme show you to your room...unfortunately, since this whole thing was on such short notice, I haven't really been able to prepare the room at all for you..."

"Oh, it's fine, I can, um, clean up the room on my own, if in case it's messy..." Matthew calls after me as we head out of the kitchen and up the stairs to her room. I open the door to one of the guest rooms, and inside is a room that is not messy at all - only because it hasn't been used in, what, three years.

"Let's get this window open..." I mutter to myself, striding across the room and pulling the sliding window open and pulling up the blinds to get some air flow in, since there is a definite muster to the room that reeks slightly with the whole not-used-very-much room smell. Matthew teeters over to the window and peeks down through the insect netting panel, marveling at how high up off the road this room is, being up on the third floor and all that. "This room's all yours, you can decorate it or rearrange the furniture in here however you like, since it seems like you'll be staying here for a while for this singularity. If you want anything else to put in this room, just let me know, and so long as it doesn't bankrupt me, I'll do everything I can to accommodate you."

Matthew smiles, but this time it's one of great appreciation. "You really don't have to go this far just to accommodate me, Senpai," she says, and I think I can pick up a very faint tone of sadness behind her voice. "You've already treated me so well. You'd be spoiling me by this point."

"Well, I'm just letting you know that if there's anything you need, just come talk to me," I repeat again. "It's not to spoil you or anything, I just want to treat my guests right, regardless of who they are. I thought that was just common courtesy that's universal throughout all cultures."

"I-I'm - I don't doubt that, Senpai, but...I'm just..." Matthew sighs. "Um...forget what I was saying, I'm sorry. I will humbly accept your kind generosity."

I nod curtly to her and stoop down to pat Fou on the head before leaving her to have the room to herself. All of these cues...they painfully tell me that Matthew's got a lot of luggage with her - it's just not the kind that can be carried around with two hands.

* * *

I spend the next hour until dinner doing some work in my office as part of my evening routine. Thankfully it's not a lot of work - just some arrival notices that came in during the afternoon while I was out with Matthew and some invoices and entry summaries that I need to get logged and sent off to my business partners. I've got some Demon Hunter playing through the speakers - it's one of my favorite little joys about my life, being able to listen to music that I like while getting some work done. You wouldn't think that something so basic and simple such as listening to music while working would be much of a big deal because it's so ordinary, such a widely understood concept and behavioral quirk that applies to many different people in many different cultures. But I like to marvel in the ordinary things, the things that no one notices. Everyone marvels at new and interesting things, things that stand out, things that demand attention; that's very easy to do. But to notice the little things, the small details that go unnoticed, the ordinary, day-to-day procedures and behaviors that everyone does without a second thought...that's not so easy.

As I get up from my chair to put the invoice I've just printed out into the scanner of my all-in-one machine, I sense Matthew peeking into my room near the top of the stairs. Without turning around to look at her, I call out to her.

"Can I help you with anything?"

"Ah, no, um...I was just...looking..."

Matthew comes inside, since my door was already open to begin with. I turn to glance at her and give her a brief smile of greeting before sliding back into my chair and attaching the scanned invoice onto an email that I'm about to send to one of my business partners. Matthew watches me work for a few minutes.

"...is this your work, Senpai?" she asks softly and slowly, afraid that if she talks, she might interrupt me. At least, that's the feeling I get when I hear that particular tone of voice.

"Yep."

"Um...is it alright if I ask what kind of work this is?"

"I'm a self-employed guy. I own my own business, and it's a freight-forwarding business," I explain, getting back up to retrieve that invoice and stick it inside its corresponding manila folder, scribbling with a red pen some marks indicating that I've emailed this invoice to where it needs to go. "You familiar with what a freight-forwarding business is?"

Matthew slowly shakes her head.

"So you know how this world runs on international commerce? Businesses of all nations around the world produce stuff and ship them to whoever's willing to buy them, and oftentimes they need to get from one country to another. A freight-forwarding business handles the logistics of sending those shipments - both domestic and international, doesn't have to be only international." Once I send the email, I place the manila folder back into its spot on the folder rack to my left and then turn around in my chair to face Matthew while talking, since that was my last folder to take care of for this evening. "We make sure that we get a shipment from point A to point B without any problems, and we handle that in place of the people sending and receiving the shipment so that they don't have to worry about it, as we're the experts in it, and they're not."

"I see," Matthew nods in understanding. "And...this is your main line of business?"

"Yep. This's how I earn my daily bread, so to speak," I gesture with two hands around my office, which really isn't an office, just two desks placed perpendicularly to one another to half-emulate an office cubicle, with a fax/scanner/printer machine standing on a drawer to my right. "Not much, really. It's a decent, steady living...enough to support a whole family, assuming I had one. But I can just use what I've saved up on whoever gets summoned for this singularity, I s'pose."

Matthew's expression grows sad, as I expected it to the moment I mentioned the fact that I had no family.

"...is it because...you live away from your family, or...?" she asks, and I know exactly why she's asking. I think.

"Nope, it's...because I lost my family a long time ago," I reply with a soft sigh. "My history's a little bit...shaky, I guess you could say. So now I live by myself, for the most part. I do have a few friends who live nearby, and they sometimes come over to crash for a night or two, but it's not all that often, I usually have this place all to myself."

"I...see. I'm...sorry to hear that, um, about your family."

"It's fine, that was a long time ago, so I've gotten over it."

I get up from my chair now.

"I know it's a little early, but wanna have dinner now?" I ask her. "That way, after we eat, I can finally get the Master conversion done and we can finally get the summoning over with."

Matthew nods. "If - if it's alright with you, I would like to explain some more details about the summoning first."

"Oh, yeah, sure."

"So...we _do_ need a large area of flat, open ground to perform the summoning, and somewhere...preferably isolated, so that we don't attract attention to ourselves. Unless you have the ability to conceal our presence, along with the entire summoning process, that is..."

"Yeah, I can do that, don't worry. As for flat, open ground, hmm..." I start pondering, but a suitable location immediately pops into my head. "There's this park nearby called Meridian Park, and it's got this big open grass field next to a baseball field that we can use. No one really goes there at night, so that should be a perfect place."

"Okay. And...if it is alright with you, once we have established our contract together, I would like to ask you to help me gauge your strength as a Master by performing a few basic attack spells on me before we initiate the summoning."

"Uhh..." I scratch my head a little. "Yeah, sure, I...guess."

"Please don't hold back. As a Demi-Servant, I am confident in my powers and ability," Matthew says, certainly exuding the confidence that matches her words.

"Okay, I'll keep that in mind."

"And lastly..."

Matthew pulls out a card from her pocket of her jacket and shows it to me. On it is depicted an image of an extraordinarily beautiful young lady, looking no older than the ripe old age of eighteen. She has on a humble suit of silverish-white armor that only covers her chest and torso and her sides via armor flaps that part to her sides, along with elbow-length gauntlets, with a white dress underneath that and detached sleeves with her gauntlets that expose her armpits and shoulders. She also has unbelievably bright green eyes and mesmerizingly light-gold-blonde hair held up in a high ponytail by a black double-tie ribbon, prominent sidelocks, and a huge upwards-sticking lock of hair that the Japanese like to call an "ahoge". So beautiful this is girl that I almost fail to spot the sword that she's holding in her right hand, though due to the card layout, it's cut off at the side.

Along the bottom of the card, beneath the image, is written a name:

**[SABER / ALTRIA PENDRAGON]**

And beneath the name is a sword icon.

"This is what is called a 'Summoning Ticket'," Matthew explains, noting my expression of piqued interest in this item that she's produced. "Normally, Summoning Tickets are the equivalent of three Saint Quartz in that they allow you to summon for a Servant through FATE exactly once, so these can be used in place of Quartz if they are available. But this particular Summoning Ticket is very unique in that this is a guaranteed summon; if used, this Servant will appear to serve you and assist us for this singularity. Chaldea has been generous enough to instruct me to give this to you...I think it is their way of apologizing for such a short notice of your role in this singularity."

I slowly take it from Matthew, continuing to gaze down at it. I'm not sure if it's because of the girl on the card's image that's making it look so damn fragile, but I feel like I'm going to make the card explode on its own if I even hold it too hard. I can tell that the magical construction of this card is immensely complicated, and the complexity of its magical integrity is what's making this card so weak and fragile to the touch.

"How is it possible for them to've made somethin' like this?" I ask curiously, raising the card up a little higher. "They basically summoned a Servant, and then turned her into a card or something? Or how did it work?"

"If I recall correctly, Dr. Archaman and Miss Olga were inspecting FATE as a side project whose objective was to somehow tune the summoning process so that it would yield a higher chance of successfully summoning Servants. Somewhere along the way, I believe they stumbled upon the magical signature of this particular Heroic Spirit and captured it, and they were able to extract it in its Heroic Spirit state, before the process that FATE uses to convert them into a physical Servant, and contained its essence in the form of this Summoning Ticket. I unfortunately am not privy to all of the details, so if you wish to inquire about that procedure further, I do suggest that you contact either of them for the full story."

"Hm, sure. So basically, this 'Altria Pendragon' is a guaranteed roll."

"Er, yes..."

"Cool. Then why not just summon her right away?"

"Um...because there is always the chance that you _could_ summon a more powerful Servant. If it that is the case, then you wouldn't necessarily _need_ this one, Miss Pendragon..." Matthew leans over to inspect the card. "You _were_ expressing some concerns that the party might grow too big for you to sustain with just this house alone..."

That's a good point, one that I myself had brought up just earlier, like Matthew said. If I _do_ happen to pull a very strong Servant right away, then there'd be no need for me to summon this Altria Pendragon Servant right away, at least not until I deem it necessary to summon her for more assistance with the singularity.

"Hm. So I guess save it for until after I've done the first roll?"

"Yes. Because in that case, even if you fail to summon a Servant with the Quartz I have brought with me, then you can simply use that Summoning Ticket and have that Servant to rely on until we can obtain more Saint Quartz to perform another Summoning."

I nod all the while that Matthew is talking.

"Cool. Anything else?"

"Erm...no, that would be all for now," Matthew smiles quickly back up at me. I guess I didn't realize this before, but I'm actually a lot taller than Matthew is - probably about a good three or four inches. This is what happens when you don't really hang out around other people very much - you forget your whole height perception and how tall you are compared to other people.

"Alright - let's make some dinner. Does Fou wanna eat, too?"

"Fou!" Fou cries, completely understanding the concept of food. Looks like communicating with Fou won't be that much of a problem, thankfully enough. As I reach down to pet it, I do wonder if it's alright for me to treat him just like any other ordinary house pet.

* * *

And five hours later, about half an hour before midnight, I find myself standing at the edge of the grassy field at Meridian Park. I've converted my magical status to that of a Master, and along with my contract with Matthew, now on the back of my right hand, underneath my black fingerless glove, are etched three red magic encryptions that are called Command Spells, the infamous spells that are not only the proof of my status as a Master but also act as orders of absolution to any Servant under my control.

But the Command Spells aren't what're on my mind right now. Just like how the day earlier today was a gorgeous sunny day with mostly clear skies and cheerful clouds, the night tonight, too, is nothing short of soothingly beautiful. The skies are just as clear as they were earlier today, and although the sky is only dotted with a handful of stars due to all the light pollution coming in from the big city of Los Angeles to the north, the moon is shining with all its might, hanging high up in the sky like the celestial jewel it is. It also helps that where I'm standing, the edge of the grass field dips down to a slope that allows me to see straight down the hill on which this park is located, where beneath are a few walking trails and even a sandy volleyball court, though there's no net to be seen on the posts. And beyond this and the houses that line the edges of the park further down, I have a direct view into the sea far off in the distance, and the moonlight is shining brightly down onto the stretch of black, causing the nighttime waters to sparkle and dance in eternal silence. This is a sight that I've seen many a time, a hidden jewel in its own right that I feel privileged to know of, and every time I see it, it's just as beautiful as the last time I saw it. I've almost fallen asleep here a few times, watching this celestial sight while sitting on one of the few benches built here just for people to be able to sit down and enjoy this stunning view, but that's a story for another time.

"The view here is...amazing, Senpai."

Matthew joins me at the edge of the field, in front of one of the benches. Fou is walking with her also looking up at the moon and the sparkling sea.

"Another reason why I like this town," I remark. "There're a few places around here that have spectacular views that you'd be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. There's even a spot nearby where, on a clear day like today, if you were to stand in a specific area, you can see both the sea and the mountains in the exact same spot. It's the only place in the world where you can do that...have the sea on one side, the mountains on the other, both visible to the naked eye."

"Wow..." Matthew smiles again, soothingly like she usually seems to do. "This town really must mean a lot to you, Senpai."

I rub my chin a little in response. "Is it, now..." I murmur, unsure myself.

"Well, how else would know little things like that if you weren't?"

"Hm. I mean, they're just little tidbits of information that I've found through my own experiences...but I do think that having extensive knowledge about a particular place and being intimate with it aren't necessarily mutually inclusive."

Shrugging, I finally turn my back to the view and head over to the middle of the grass field. I've already set up a large presence-concealing spell and a warding spell so that people and other sentient entities will stay away from our area and not notice anything going on here, so all that's left to do now before the summoning itself is to have Matthew test my strength as a mage.

As I stop and am about to turn around to face Matthew, I hear a loud whooshing of wind kick up near Matthew's location, and turning around, I find the grass waving in all directions away from her, and a light mist - no, wait, those are _snowflakes -_ is falling all around Matthew, fluttering down like feathers onto the grass, where they evaporate immediately as soon as they touch the blades of grass. There Matthew stands, but she's no longer in her casual outfit, let's call it - rather, she's -

...what the fuck is she wearing?

She dons on a...some kind of metal corset that exposes the navel and barely goes past her pelvis. Her forearms and legs are clothed by black and purple elbowgloves and leggings, and the design of the armored corset and the color scheme combined do make for quite the costume, but I think I would appreciate it more if it didn't make Matthew look like she was going to flash someone just by turning around and putting her back to them. I was only planning on watching one beautiful moon tonight, thanks.

I do notice, other than the stripperific nature of her costume, that her glasses are nowhere to be seen, and much more apparent that her lack of glasses is her acquisition of a huge cross-shaped weapon of some kind that stands next to her, the bottom part of the cross wedged into the grass, probably due to its weight. The cross bears a circular shield where the cross intersects, and the center of the cross's intersection sports a gear-like symbol that's grayed out compared to the rest of the weapon's black coloring, with white inscriptions on the top and bottom.

Now that Matthew's donned her Demi-Servant status, I can now fully gauge her power as a magical entity, and damn, she's strong, I can tell right away. It's hard for me to tell if, when I met her for the first time earlier today at Nelson Park, whether she was holding back all this magical power on her own knowingly or not. I would venture to guess that it's just because of her dual-nature as both a human and Demi-Servant that masks the vast majority of her magical signature, but I could be wrong; because of the sheer concentration of Matthew's power, it could very well be that she was consciously controlling her magical energy output.

Brushing her very long bangs aside that fall back over her right eye anyway, Matthew looks up at me in my direction and smiles again, this time with the same confidence that she showed before, earlier this evening.

"Demi-Servant Mash - er, I mean, Matthew Kyrielight, Shielder-Class, now reporting for duty!" she calls over, grabbing the central handlebar of her cross-shield like a seasoned badass and ripping it right out of the grass in which it's stuck to wield it properly. "Senpai, your orders, please!"

"...but you already know them," I call over, tilting my head a little. I can see that Matthew immediately realizes her lapse, as she cringes a little, trying to hide the fact that she's blushing.

"I-I'm sorry! It's - it's just force of habit!" she hollers over.

"Right. You ready?"

Upon hearing this, Matthew immediately snaps out of her embarrassment to get to work, and she slams her cross-shield down in front of her.

"Anytime, Senpai!"

So I raise my right hand like a finger gun, pointing it downrange at Matthew. A _lot_ of the attacks and spells I have in my arsenal are gibbed from various shows and animes that I've watched over the years because I like them for how they look or because I got curious one day if there's any merit to recreating them myself and using them as effective and/or efficient methods of combat. This one's from the old anime Yu Yu Hakusho, specifically the protagonist's Reigun ability. I like it because it's a very simple magical attack concept - you channel energy into your hand and concentrate it through your finger, and it'll emerge as a projectile of magic, and it goes towards whatever you're pointing at. Not much mechanical skill involved either, since you're just pointing your finger at your target, essentially, and the attack itself is also flexible - you can fire off either a burst of energy, or release a constant stream of energy. And most convenient for me personally is the fact that I can use it without any sort of incantation; it's literally fire and forget, and I've gotten so good at using it that I can easily control how much power I put into a shot.

So I pop off a shot at Matthew. I don't pack a lot of power into it, there's no point in trying too hard about this, as this is just for the sake of Matthew trying to figure out how strong I am, apparently. My shot travels at a pretty steady speed, and I'm sure Matthew can easily see it coming and brace for it, so I watch as Matthew tightens her grip on her shield and lets it take the attack head-on, the energy of the Reigun shot blasting away as soon as it comes into contact with the shield in all opposite directions, dispersing almost instantly. That cross-shield is certainly something.

Matthew peeks out from her shield.

"That was a great spell, Senpai!" she calls over. "I could tell right away. You're going to be a really strong Master!"

"Thanks, I guess. Is that all you need, or, uh, do you need more of these test runs?" I call back over.

"That's all I needed. I asked for a several just in case you needed some warmups, but it's clear that you didn't need them," Matthew explains as she hurries over to me, carrying that huge cross-shield with the easiest of eases. Something about this sight of a girl like her carrying a shield that's not only at least twice as big as her but also probably weighs at least four times as she does...I don't know, it doesn't _bother_ me, per se, it's just weird to see. She meets up with me quickly, and now that she's back up close and personal, god _damn,_ she's fine as hell. I blame this stupid fucking costume, though. The only merit that I can see with it is that she can move freely without worrying about her clothes getting in the way, but for God's sake, whoever designed this thing, you couldn't have made some kind of effort to _not_ make her look like her corset's going to fall off on their own at any moment? I've seen enough anime as it is to last me that kind of fetish for three lifetimes...

But I keep all that to myself as I greet her again.

"So are we gonna do the summoning right here? This's a big open spot, right?" I ask, looking around.

"Yes, this place is perfect," Matthew nods as she sets down her cross-shield in between us on the grass.

"So...where's the FATE device thing?" I ask, watching her.

"It's this." Matthew gestures to her shield, and I stare.

"It's your _shield?"_

"Well, specifically, the inscriptions here," Matthew points at the white inscriptions on the top and bottom. "My shield is just a vessel for the summoning procedure."

"Then why the hell were they all calling it a 'device'?"

"I think for security reasons - they want to keep the identity of the device as much of a secret as possible. For good reason, might I add."

"Hm, guess so." I don't really sound all that convinced, though.

As Matthew gets up from her shield, the shield's circular center starts to emit a bright blue rune that expands until it's the size of a large circular podium, and around us warp into view these magical leylines and grid-like rings that surround us lightly, like the rings of Saturn or something. As I enjoy this mysteriously enigmatic but also mystical sight, Matthew hands me the little tin full of Saint Quartz.

"Hold out your hands, Senpai," she instructs, and so I do, and she literally pours the Quartz right into my cupped hands. "Now place them on top of the rune before us, and FATE will do the rest."

So I do just that. I place the pile of thirty Quartz on top of the cross-shield's active rune, and as soon as I pull my hands away, the rune glows brighter, and the Quartz all disperse into vapors of magical energy that quickly evaporate, presumably absorbed by the FATE device or rune or whatever the hell it is exactly.

Promptly, the rune's leylines around us also glow brighter along with the central rune, and a single ring of bright blue energy blasts out from the center of the rune, passing through us briefly before snapping itself back into the center.

* * *

One minute and ten rings of glowing magical energy later, I stand with a stack of five Craft Essences in my hand, holding them like a hand of playing cards. From left to right, it appears I've gotten what are called the Azoth Blade, the Crimson Black Keys, the Dragon's Meridian, the Iron-Willed Training, and Kaleidoscope Craft Essences.

And no Servants.

The other five were busts - didn't get anything.

"Well, that was fun," I murmur dryly, lowering my hand. "Just like playin' the lottery, huh..."

"I-I can assure you that it's supposed to have gone better than that," Matthew shyly mumbles, not knowing what to say. "Usually, um...usually you can expect to get at least one Servant from the first Summoning...I don't really understand why it didn't give you any this time..."

"My question is, and always will be, why the _fuck_ this shit had to be not only _randomized_ , but also _based on chance."_ I scratch my head, already kind of annoyed at the fact that a system like this exists, and that this is considered to be the best way to deal with an S-Class singularity - by basically gambling. "Well, whatever. I guess it's just between the two of us, then, to handle this one..."

"Wait, Senpai, remember? You have that guaranteed Summoning Ticket!"

I again laugh rather dryly. "But you said I wouldn't need it."

"I didn't expect for something like _this_ to happen, where you wouldn't get _anyone!"_ Matthew bows her head. "I'm really sorry about this...this is just...just terrible luck, there's no other way to put it. I'll contact Chaldea when we get back home and tell them of your situation, and I'm sure that they'll send us another batch of Quartz again."

"Nah, don't bother. Not like they're gonna listen to that kind of a request anyway, depending on how valuable Saint Quartz are to them."

"But they will! I promise, Senpai."

Still not _really_ listening to her, I just nonchalantly shrug as I pull out the Summoning Ticket from my pocket that Matthew gave me earlier.

"So just put this on the rune too, and she'll pop out, huh..." I murmur aloud.

"Um, yes. This will be guaranteed, so she will come no matter what."

"You didn't have to repeat that, I don't think."

I put Altria Pendragon's card on the rune, and sure enough, the rune glows again, but this time, three rings of blazing blue energy expand out and snap back in. As soon as they constrict back to the center, a tall pillar of bright blue magical energy towers into the air, quickly dispersing to reveal the same exact young lady clad in her insufficient armor and golden good looks. When the blue energy disperses completely, the girl, apparently levitating off the rune a few inches, slowly lands back down against the rune, standing on it briefly as she opens her eyes and smiles down at both me and Matthew, clutching her sword in her hand while small golden sparkles float about her, almost like an aftereffect of the summoning. In a bright, youthfully young and most certainly perfect British accent, she declares,

"It is nice to meet you, Master. Since I am still in training, please call me Saber Lily. Please take care of me, and again, it is both a pleasure and an honor to serve you!"


	4. Rock, Paper, Scissors

**Chapter 4: Rock, Paper, Scissors**

* * *

**A/N:**

**Axormin: To tell you that would be spoilers. As much as anyone cares about spoilers about a work of fanfiction.**

**AK-103: never be afraid to act on a concept that you have that you want to expand on by writing, even if you feel like you won't finish it. Just getting started is key.**

**Just Some Dude: in this fic, her name will be Matthew. Partly because I think the name "Mash" is dumb as hell and not a name I can take seriously. I don't know, something about that name triggers something in me, and normally I don't really care for names, it just so happens that this particular one does. But just my opinion.**

**GreyMan19: If you take the time to reread the Author's Note on the first chapter, you'll see that** **the first paragraph highly implies that I do indeed play FGO. That same Author's note also mentions that this story will be based on my "personal adventures" with the game, and I quote, "and [with] the servants I happened to roll". So I think I answered your question even before you asked it.**

**-Akyuu no Joshu**

* * *

Saber Lily daintily steps from from the hologram platform that serves as FATE's summoning circle. The holy, soft shroud of golden light still lingers exquisitely, hugging Saber Lily's body and chest armor even when she steps off onto the ground, and when she sets her metal boots on the ground, it's almost as if the light radiates off her and bleeds into the grass on which she steps.

I would mention the part where she also happens to be the single most beautiful young lady I've ever had the pleasure of setting my eyes on, but I think that just goes without saying. Sorry, Matthew.

Stopping in front of me and looking up at me, since I am well taller than her, she clasps her huge sword - or is it a claymore? No, it's probably somewhat smaller than a claymore - with both hands, the blade pointing straight down at the ground at her feet, and smiles radiantly, just as bright as the morning sun. She's quite easy on the eyes...therapeutic, even; I like her already.

"Good evening," I greet her back, raising my hand up to my cap and tipping the visor at her. Since I'm not wearing a fedora at the moment, the cap will do. "I'll be your Master for duration of this singularity. I'm Augustus Il, but you can just call me August." I extend a hand to her, half wondering if she, being a Heroic Spirit from another era in the distant past, would recognize what a handshake is and would mean in the present day, but to my small surprise, Saber Lily smiles and graciously cradles her sword underneath her left arm as she pleasantly returns the handshake...with _both_ hands, even. How sweet of her.

"It's my dearest pleasure to serve you, Master Il," Saber Lily says, but her smile fades a little as her facial expression grows a little more concerned. "But...Master, I do beg your pardon for my asking, but...your surname...it has nothing to do with your physical condition, does it?"

Somewhat distracted by Saber Lily's adorably beautiful British accent, which is the most royal kind of British accent I've ever had the pleasure of hearing, I shake my head.

"No, it's, uh, it's an Asian family name," I explain briefly. "I'm Korean by blood."

"Kor...ean...?" Saber Lily tilts her head a little, tilting her head a little in wonder. "I _do_ think that...that I have heard of it...but...I cannot remember...exactly..."

"Uh, for now, just know that I'm of Oriental descent," I summarize quickly, since it seems like Saber Lily isn't too familiar with Asian countries. "And don't worry, whenever I meet with people who aren't too familiar with last names like mine, they ask me the same thing, too, so don't feel bad."

"Oh, I see," Saber Lily smiles a little bit awkwardly. "Th-Thank you kindly for your, um, your consideration. I-I'm - I am still an apprentice knight, you see, and I pray that this singularity to which I have been summoned to fight will provide me the perfect opportunity that I may use to train and grow into a strong knight and, eventually, a strong King of Britain."

King of Britain...the name on the bottom of Saber Lily's summoning ticket or card or whatever it was did say the name "Altria Pendragon", if I recall correctly. From what little I know of FATE, the Heroic Spirits that it summons as Servants are indeed taken from famous figures in history - it can even materialize famous legends or people who may or may not have actually existed. And case in point, I'd had a sneaking suspicion that maybe it could be King Arthur, but...if so, why is King Arthur a hot chick, and why the fuck is her name "Altria"? I guess this FATE thing is just like those weird people who love gender-swapping famous people from history for not much more reason than to give themselves more wank material. But I guess this is a little bit different...not that there's a point to complaining about genderswapped Kings of Britain to begin with, especially not with one standing right in front of me. And I _did_ say she's pretty damn cute...

"So you're...King Arthur," I ask Saber Lily slowly, crossing my arms slowly too. "Or, rather, more specifically, you're _going_ to be King Arthur."

"Ah..." Saber Lily grasps the handle of her big sword a little bit more tightly, "...it's, um...it's actually King _Artoria_."

It takes a lot out of me not to roll my eyes. The genderswapping is too real.

"Okay, King Artoria, then," I correct myself as per Saber Lily's insistence. "Then might I ask if you're the actual King Artoria? Do you have the memories of your, I guess it would be yourself from back in your day?"

"That's right," Saber Lily nods strongly. "Although...I suppose it would be more accurate to call this manifestation of myself a preserved copy of what I was like at this point in my life during the time that I lived."

"Hm..." I tap my fingers thoughtfully against my folded arms.

"Is there something on your mind, Senpai?" Matthew asks me, noting my contemplative expression.

"Yeah, one big thing, actually," I nod. "Actually, before I talk about it, this is Matthew Kyrielight - she's the one who's set up this summoning system that we've managed to summon you through, and she'll be helping us handle this upcoming singularity," I introduce Saber Lily to Matthew quickly, and Saber Lily treats Matthew the same way that she treated me - a big, sunny smile and a two-handed handshake.

The moment she takes Matthew's hand for the handshake, I notice that Saber Lily starts blinking, as if in surprise, but she holds it in. I can tell that she really wants to ask Matthew something, but she isn't for some reason. I'm guessing it's because she doesn't want to get in the way of our conversation that we were about to have just now before the introduction.

I make a mental note to bring this up to her when we're alone...at some point.

"So there is one big thing that I wanna ask the two of you," I point at both the girls after they're done with their handshake. "When Servants get summoned into this world, how much do they know about it? Is it to the point where I've gotta teach 'em about how the world works nowadays, in this present day, or do they already kind of know? Or is it somewhere in between?"

"It's generally in between, but all Servants are summoned into whatever era into which they have been called to serve with a general understanding of the current times," Matthew declares. "For example, Miss Lily, you are familiar with modern-day electronic devices and automobiles, yes?"

"Ah...y-yes, I-I do know what they are," Saber Lily nods hastily, hugging her big sword against the side of her chestplate rather cutely, in a way that makes people weak to cute stuff go _squee!_ "And it is as Lady Kyrielight says, Master. We Servants are a basic understanding of the world into which we have been summoned. Of course, there, uh, there may be some nuances that we are not familiar with, so...so for those, when they come up, I may require some explanation about them..."

"Okay. 'Cause I was just making sure, I wanted to know if I needed to spend like a day or two getting you acclimated to how life it nowadays...guess I don't have to worry too much."

Saber Lily nods heartily. "In my life, I loved to travel and learn the ways of my people in Britain. I wish to do the same in this life as well, in this world and land where things may be different from what I myself am used to. I consider it as part of my journey to become Ki - "

A definitely audible grumbling whines from a particular someone's stomach. It can't be either me or Matthew, since we just ate not more than an hour ago. So that only leaves...

"...I'm...terribly sorry, Master..." Saber Lily is cringing in front of me, looking crestfallen with sheer embarrassment while she clutches her stomach, not because she's hungry to the point where she could collapse, but because she wishes she could make her grumbling stomach disappear or something. At least, that's what it looks like she's doing to me.

"I guess Servants come summoned hungry, huh?" I crack a small joke, making Matthew smile a little bit as she pats Saber Lily reassuringly on her left shoulder. Saber Lily's face is lighting up like a light-up Christmas ornament, and I do feel for her, having an embarrassing moment like that happen in front of someone you're supposed to consider your Master and all that. "Well, I think we're just about done here. Once we pack up Matthew's shield and FATE thing, we can head back home, and I'll make you something to eat."

At the mention of food, I swear to God I see her prominent strand of idiot hair spike up in interest, like it's some sort of hair radar that's on the lookout for food.

"B-B-But I...I can't ask of my Master to serve _me_ food..." Saber Lily cries weakly, but I can just tell by the tone of her voice alone that the temptation of food is working wonders against her psyche. "...but...if...if you insist, Master..."

"Sure, it's no problem," I give Saber Lily a friendly grin. "You're going to be staying at my home, after all, for the duration of this singularity. I like to think that it's part of my job as a homeowner to take care of my guests, even if they're technically my Servants."

Saber Lily sighs with relief that her hunger will hopefully be satisfied, but then she fidgets uncomfortably, finding it very difficult to look back at me in the eye.

"...I humbly apologize for inconveniencing you like this, Master..." Saber Lily sniffles a little. "It really does hurt my pride as a future King to ask of you something like this...but...I can assure you that I will do all that I can to fulfill my purpose as your Servant!" Getting all motivated again, Saber Lily beams, starting to raise her big ol' sword, but then her stomach strongly disapproves of her knightly bravado and drags her back down into the sticky pit of embarrassment. Both Matthew and I share a brief chuckle at Saber Lily's stomach's impeccable timings while Saber Lily herself groans again and buries her face into her metal gloved hands.

* * *

"Alright, here you go. Sorry for the wait."

With a tall, cold glass of 2% fat milk that she's already drunk half of, Saber Lily's eyes and mouth get _huge_ when she sees me walk out of the kitchen with a big plate filled to the edges with purple rice cooked with mushrooms, grilled onions, Korean short ribs, big and thick slices of ham dressed very lightly with a gentle spread of barbecue sauce, microwavable corn, and bite-sized kimchi. If I look hard enough into Saber Lily's widened green eyes, I think I can start seeing sparkles fly out of them. And true to her name, there are lily flowers blooming all around her - on the walls, on the chair on which she sits, on the floor -

\- wait a minute, those aren't just shoujo anime special effects, goddamn it.

Saber Lily herself doesn't seem to take notice of the lilies that are sprouting all around her as I set her plate in front of her, with Matthew sitting next to her, also a little bit alarmed at the sight of lilies sprouting out of nowhere around them.

"Oh...oh my goodness...!" Saber Lily exclaims like a schoolgirl in a pet shop that's filled with all sorts of puppies. "Th-Thank you so much, Master! This is so much food, you're - you are far too kind...!"

"I figured, since you're a Servant, that you'd like a lot of food, so don't worry, help yourself," I nod with the same smile that I've been giving her before taking a seat across the table from her, not that the table itself is very big anyway.

Having magically taken off her armor and put away her sword, now in her clothes that she apparently wears underneath her armor, which look like perfectly normal maiden's clothing that she could easily wear out in public without drawing attention (her cute looks definitely will, though, which makes me a little more than somewhat worried), Saber Lily immediately digs in - completely ignoring the utensils that I've set out for her prior to bringing her her late dinner. Seizing the short ribs first, she gorges on the meats immediately, without hesitation, and Matthew smiles a little awkwardly again as she and I both watch the new arrival to our household feast on the little dinner I've made to satisfy her hunger for the time being.

Normally I'd be quick to judge a cute girl eating like an absolute savage, but now that I've actually been given a chance to sit in front of such a girl eating like this, I realize that it doesn't make Saber Lily look barbaric; rather, it honestly looks pretty cute. Maybe it's her perpetual expression of pure, unadulterated joy of being able to enjoy good food and drink - admittedly, I've never seen any other girl in my life eat with a look quite like that. The look of pure appreciation, the look of almost childish but shining delight - not a lot of people these days ever bother to sit down and appreciate anything; nowadays it's just nothing but complaining, taking things for granted, and bitching that I see from people.

But what more do you expect from people who've never faced a danger in their lives. Sheltered and unexposed to what the world is truly like, the ugly side of it. After all, if you've never seen the dark, eventually you'll start thinking that the light is what the dark looks like.

"I think I should'a asked this before we actually started the summoning, but can you tell me more about the Servants?" I ask Matthew, turning to her while we watch Saber Lily eat to her heart's content. I get the feeling that I'll be needing to make more food, at the rate at which the food on her plate is rapidly disappearing before my eyes.

"Of course. What would you like to ask about?" Matthew smiles back at me, giving me her attention at my request.

"Well, I know that there're multiple classes of Servants, right, but I don't know all of them - not too familiar with them. Saber Lily here is, well, a Saber. What are the other classes, and what are the advantages of each class?"

Matthew nods. "There are seven main classes of Servants that can be summoned through FATE, with two main groups of classes within those seven classes. The first group, called the Knights, are comprised of three classes: Sabers, Lancers, and Archers. The Saber-Class are a class of expert sword-wielders, as the name suggests, and they are very good close-quarters warriors who can fill any role you wish for them to have well; think of them as...what's the phrase, as 'jacks of all trades'."

"Then...masters of none?"

"Well, I will explain something else later, but for now, it depends on the Servant. Servants have access to skills that they can use while in battle to help them turn the tide in their favor, and they all possess a very powerful attack called a Noble Phantasm when they think that the situation is dire enough. So...not necessarily 'Masters of None', per se."

"So I'll just have to see with each Servant."

"That's correct." Matthew clears her throat a little. "Next, the Lancer-Class are a class of proficient spear-wielders and lance-wielders who specialize in hit-and-run tactics thanks to their high agilities and speed, and the Archer-Class are a class of powerful ranged Servants who are skilled in scouting and possess really strong Noble Phantasms."

I nod, listening along. "Makes sense so far."

"Mhm. Before I go on to the next group of Servants, there's another aspect to these classes that I need to tell you about, and that's their in-class proficiencies against one another. It is like a sort of rock-paper-scissors kind of system: Sabers are good against Lancers, Lancers are good against Archers, and Archers are good against Sabers."

I blink a little, digesting this.

"...wait, what's the reasoning behind that," I ask bluntly. "Sabers are good against Lancers?"

"Ah..." Matthew senses the incredulity in my voice when I ask this and starts to get a little flustered, trying to think of a response. "W-Well...Sabers are typically considered the masters of close-range combat, so - "

"So they _are_ a master in something."

"Y-Yes, I guess...but the thing is, Lancers are much better known for their speed. In terms of raw close-quarters combat ability, Sabers trump them because they are usually more versed in it, rather than the Lancers, who concentrate on their speed. So should a Saber and a Lancer be pitted against one another, usually a Saber would come out victorious because of their superior skill in close-ranged combat."

I slowly raise a hand to scratch the side of my face, knowing full well that the expression on my face at the moment is one of hesitant disbelief. I just can't imagine Lancers being outclassed by Sabers - logically speaking, someone with a longer bladed weapon against someone else with a shorter bladed weapon is usually going to win just because of the length of their weapon alone, so a spear user can just zone out a guy with a sword indefinitely, assuming both are of roughly equal skill. Not to mention the fact that it's much easier to get good with a spear, since a spear is just an easier weapon to use and get skilled with quickly compared to something like a sword. There's a reason why armies in history have been trained with spears rather than swords...

...but on the other hand, these Servants aren't just plebeians waving sticks with blades on the end around for fun. They're Heroic Spirits, with obviously superhuman talents and capabilities, so logic limited by standard human capacity and bounds need not apply, I suppose. And even off my own logic, because swords are harder to train with and get good with, I suppose way down the road of training, at a superhuman, a supernatural level of swordsmanship, that training weight, you could even say, of a sword being an inherently more difficult weapon to master goes a long way, so through this, I start seeing why Sabers can trump Lancers in this...system, I guess. My facial expression relaxes once I come to this conclusion, and I nod at Matthew so that she doesn't have to be so worried about any questions that I might have.

"Okay, I get it. And what about the others?" I ask, beckoning for her to continue.

"Right, the next group of Servants...they are known as the Horsemen. The Rider-Class are a class of skilled mount-riders who are unrivaled in their ability to tame and ride."

My eyes slide a little towards the left. Does that mean that in the present day, they'll be able to drive cars and ride motorcycles? That'd be pretty cool, actually.

"The Caster-Class are made up of Servants who are well-versed in magecraft and are considered the greatest magic-users of all Servants, and the Assassin-Class are Servants who are best used for covert activities, assassinations, and anything else you want to have done quietly and stealthily. And just like the affinity system for the Knights, Riders are effective against Casters, Casters are effective against Assassins, and Assassins are effective against Riders."

Matthew clears her throat a little again.

"But in regards to the affinity system, please keep in mind that while it does sometimes dictate the outcomes of certain battles, for the most part you do not really need to worry too hard about them; it all depends on the Servant's individual skill and the outlying circumstances as far as a victory is concerned. It's just something I felt you should keep in mind, just in case that it will actually make a difference."

I nod again. "So that's six classes...and you said there're seven main ones. What's the last one?"

"Ah, yes, the seventh class - they are known as Berserkers. They are a class of warriors who have traded their humanities for extreme power and strength. They are very effective against all of the other six classes of Servants, but they are generally considered glass cannons because they themselves can easily be defeated, because they fight with brute strength with little to no finesse."

"So the other classes can beat them just as easily by outplaying them, basically."

"Yes, that's exactly it."

"Cool." I glance at Matthew - and while we're on the subject of Servant classes, another question runs through my mind that I feel like I need to ask now, since we're on the topic. "And I don't think I've asked you this before, but class are you, Matthew?"

"Ah..." Matthew smiles with that shy expression of hers. "As for me...I am...in a bit of a unique situation due to my Demi-Servant status. I am known as a Shielder."

"Because of your shield?"

"I-I guess so. I also have skills that enable me to defend my allies, so I help protect them from our enemies while they can concentrate on attacking them."

"Makes sense. Is there anyone else in your class? Since you did say that you're in a unique position."

"Ah, no, I'm...I'm currently the only one of my class. I don't think there are any other Shielders..."

"That's cool, you get to be in a class all by yourself. Is it lonely there, at the top?"

Matthew gives me another one of her cringing smiles.

"...at times, I do...I do feel a little lonely..." she admits softly, fidgeting in her chair. "I am, after all, the only Demi-Servant. No other Servant is a fusion between a human and a Heroic Spirit, everyone else are pure Heroic Spirits who have myths, legends, or history written of them to legitimize their existences. But - but that's not to say that I feel lonely all the time. I have my friends and fellow Servants whom I can protect, and everyone appreciates my efforts in protecting them. Usually."

Fou jumps into my lap while Matthew is talking to occupy it, and I reach down and give it a good rub-down, running my fingers through Fou's luxurious mane. Its fur feels like water, silky smooth and huggably soft. And while Matthew is talking, I glance over at Saber Lily, who's just about done clearing her plate. Considering how much food I piled onto her plate, she sure eats fast.

"Thank you so much for the food, Master!" Saber Lily exclaims as she finishes her glass of milk too. Her hands and her face are somewhat of a mess - to be expected, since she's been eating with her fingers, mainly, so I pick up Fou and set it on the empty chair next to me while I reach over for a napkin from the stack that sits at the end of the table and walk around the table to help wipe Saber Lily's face down. "A-Ah - M-Master, I - "

"Hold still, m'kay? You can go wash your hands in the bathroom afterwards," I tell her as I busy myself, wiping the barbecue sauce and short rib grease off her lips. There isn't as much of it as I thought, and it only takes a few seconds, though Saber Lily doesn't look _too_ pleased.

"I could do that on my own, Master..." she murmurs with the tiniest of pouts. "A k-king needn't rely on someone else to wipe her mouth for her."

"My bad. You just seemed like a younger sister type while you were eating, so I couldn't resist my desire to take care of you like one."

Saber Lily frets some more, but she blushes along with it, so I don't think she took too badly to that, and she soon stands up to go to the bathroom to wash her hands, excusing herself while I take her plate and glass to go wash in the sink. Matthew tags along with me, as does Fou.

"So when will we know that the singularity's beginning?" I ask Matthew while washing the plate, since I hear her footsteps enter the kitchen and I know that Saber Lily's in the bathroom right now washing her hands.

"There should be an intense magical signature that we can sense very easily, since we are in the projected area of its appearance," Matthew answers. "Once it appears, we must travel to its location and investigate the nature of the singularity so that we can figure out how best to deal with it and ultimately shut it down."

"Is there anything that we know already, or that Chaldea knows already, that we can work off of or expect? Just so that we know what to prepare for?"

"Um...well, typically you can expect to run into enemies like armed undead skeletons and zombified humans. Oh, and there may be a chance that we will run into Servants who have been corrupted by the singularity, called 'Shadow Servants'."

"Well, shit. Guess we'll need to be careful about them, huh."

"Yes. While it is projected that they are not _as_ strong as their true Servant selves, they still possess the same skills and abilities, so they are by no means a small threat."

"Do you think that we can, uh, 'beat' this singularity, so to speak, just between the three of us?" I ask, scrubbing the plate now with dish soap. "Or do you think we'll need more Servants?"

"Honestly...we may need more," Matthew says, and I can hear a definite, unmistakable drop in her tone when she says this. "This is why, later tonight, I will contact Chaldea and request more Saint Quartz after explaining to them your situation."

I roll my eyes. Damn lottery system...there's a reason why I've always kept shy from gambling and other stuff like that, online micro-transactions and whatnot on the internet or on mobile...

...now that I think about it, Chaldea is starting to seem more and more like a mobile game company. Paying for Saint Quartz...that's what a mobile game company would do, I feel like. Then I guess this would mean that Matthew is my free Saint Quartz hack, though I think I'd prefer not to think of her that way.

"Will they actually send more? I still don't think that they're likely to do that," I repeat my question from before.

"They will. I know Miss Olga personally, and I can use my position in Chaldea to convince her," Matthew insists. "For you to be unable to summon a _single_ Servant from the initial batch...this cannot go unaddressed."

"Well, in case that they refuse in the end, don't worry about it. I'm sure we'll manage somehow, just with the three of us."

"But this being an S-Class singularity, it's best if we try to assemble at least a party of six. And, um, you'll be fighting with us, right...?"

I snort a little.

"Of course. It's been a while, after all..."


	5. A Lazy Mage

**Chapter 5: A Lazy Mage**

* * *

"Hello? Um, yes, hello, I'm - my name is August Il, house freight forwarder for Lukenstor Electronics...yes, good morning, I'm fine, thank you. Um, I'm calling today to check if you have the arrival notice for this shipment prepared yet or not. If you don't have it, I'd like the ETA for it instead...yes, I've got your reference number right here..."

Another ordinary day at work for me. One of the shipments I'm working on hasn't gotten an arrival notice in it yet and it's scheduled to arrive here at LAX harbor in about two days, which is a little bit closer than I'd like so I can get all the customs paperwork done to clear the shipment in time for delivery, so I'm calling another freight forwarder who's in charge of shipping the container in question out of China, from whence it's been shipped, to see if they've prepared the arrival notice for me or not. If there's no arrival notice in my folders when it's starting to near their estimated dates of arrival, then it means that I either overlooked some emails or they haven't come in yet. And since I always make sure to leave no email unchecked, it's usually the latter.

It's about eleven o'clock in the morning now - April 20th. I'd do well to stay away from the Internet today.

As I speak with the master agent's call representative, I sense someone near my door and stay there, and since I know for a fact that my door is left open, that means, by logical conclusion, if someone's standing at my door, they're looking inside to see what I'm up to. There's no real reason for me to have my own door shut - as you can probably imagine before Matthew and Lily came along - I'm calling Saber Lily just 'Lily' from now on, by the way - how many hyphens am I gonna use here - since I'm the only one who lives in my own house the vast majority of the time, and I like having a breeze go through my house on the third floor. Heat usually rises up to the top of my house, that being the third floor (shout-outs to SCIENCE!), and my office also happens to be in my own bedroom, which is also on the third floor, and with all the office equipment in here, plus the fact that I have not one, but _two_ computers, one for work and one for gaming and chill, it can get pretty hot in here, so I usually like to keep the windows in my room and the room across the floor, which is now Matthew's room, open, and thus having my own door open just makes all the more sense to keep that natural ventilation going.

Unfortunately for my fondness for natural ventilation, Matthew now occupies the guest room that I like to have the windows open in. And since I didn't notify Matthew about this, now my natural ventilation's been cut off. First world problems, man...it's the _struggle_ out here.

"I see...so just to repeat, the new estimated arrival date is April 30th..." I repeat after the call rep on the other end, writing it down on the side of my manila folder that contains the initial paperwork for this particular container. "Okay, thank you very much. Oh, no, that'd be all for today. Thank you, uh-huh, buh-bye."

Setting down the receiver, I scribble down some notes with my left hand onto the side of the manila folder while also reaching over for my mouse and clicking on an Excel file that contains a detailed status list for all the shipments in my business inventory so that I can update the ETA on that too, since I've found out the hard way that I do occasionally forget to record small edits like these, and they sometimes come back to bite me in the ass. The small details are what are important, especially in this kind of a business - it's usually cookie-cutter all the way, but sometimes there might be those few shipments where the paperwork's a little funny to complete, or there're some weird circumstances that surround the shipment, or maybe the shipment itself is taking a different route than what I usually work on.

By this point, whoever was standing in front of my open door has now quietly tiptoed into my office, curious to watch me work. I ignore her, or whoever it is, for the time being, since I sense that whoever's behind me as no hostile intent to speak of and thus poses no threat to me, giving me the luxury of simply ignoring her for the sake of my work.

I tidy up this file save the small edit I've made to my Excel file in regards to this change in shipment ETA, put away the folder in the folder rack to my left, and then turn around in my swivel chair to face my guest. It's Matthew - holding Fou.

"Hey, what's up," I give her a quick grin, looking up at her from my seat. "Anything I can do for you?"

"H-Huh? Oh, oh, um, uh, no, I - " Matthew, as if not realizing what she herself has done by walking into my office, takes a nervous step back, squeezing Fou just a little bit harder. "I was just...I was just curious to watch you w-working...I thought it might look interesting..."

I give a bit of a chuckle. "Oh, no, this - this work wouldn't be interesting to you in the slightest. Not compared to what Chaldean employees usually have to deal with, anyway."

To my surprise, Matthew starts pouting, like she's offended by my assumption. "Th-That's not true, Senpai! I'm always fascinated with how normal people work every day. I used to be human too...so, maybe in a world where I didn't become the Demi-Servant that I am now, I would...I would be working a day job like this..."

"Fair point. Then if that's the case, you can hang out, I don't mind."

"R-Really? I won't...be distracting, or get in the way?"

"No, not really. I've gotten pretty good at working with distractions in the background..." I roll my eyes, thinking of the times when I've had to work in the middle of the evening with friends over trashing my place and drinking my liquor.

"...that just makes me feel even more like I shouldn't be here..."

"It's fine, do what'cha like."

"Um, then, how long will you be working for? Or, um, how long will it take to finish your work for this morning?"

"I'm actually almost done. Usually I'm done with my morning shift at around lunch." I pick up and hold up for her a few manila folders that I need to log in a data entry program that helps me record the invoices and bills for my shipments and prints out my own arrival notices and invoices for my customers. "I just need to handle these, which should only take a few minutes, maybe five or ten minutes at most, and I'll be off for the morning."

"O-Okay."

So Matthew helps herself to a seat at the foot of my bed, letting Fou down onto my bed, which I always make after waking up, even while living by myself, so Fou curls up on top of my spread blanket and rubs its cheek affectionately against the soft fabric. Matthew tries to get Fou to stop, perhaps out of fear that I might get angry that Fou is ruining my blankets, but I casually ignore them, since I really don't care if Fou does. It's not like it's dragging its ass across the _top_ of the sheets...

"S-Senpai?" Matthew asks hesitantly as I start typing away rapidly at my keyboard, the data entry boxes in my program rapidly filling with text and numbers as my fingers turn my keyboard into an audible machine gun that fires digital pixels that look like letters and numbers rather than bullets. "Is it alright if I...I ask you something?"

"Sure," I reply, a bit more loudly than my usual conversational voice because my keyboard, being a Blackwidow Ultimate that I got for fifty bucks on a Black Friday sale, is pretty loud with its factory default switches - I forget which ones they are. Usually the loud keys aren't a problem since I'm the only one around to have to put up with them, but now I think the loud keys will become a legitimate noise issue, since I'm not too sure how well Lily's going to like having to hear my keys from across the floor in her own room through the door - and yes, I type that loudly. I should fix that. "What's up?"

"I...saw a little bit earlier, when I first walked in, but...a-are you...ambidextrous?"

I nod. "Yup. Comes in kinda handy sometimes...lets me do two things at once. It's pretty nice."

Matthew smiles, and I can tell that she's smiling without looking at her because of the very slight composed giggle that she makes.

"It's...it must be weird, isn't it," she remarks, "for someone like me to be all...amazed at someone who's ambidextrous."

"Ambidexterity is pretty rare even among mages, in my own personal experience. Mages are, after all, only human..." I shrug. "It's one of those things that you just kinda have to train yourself to do. Unless you're born with it, then I guess you just got lucky..."

"Were you born with it, Senpai?"

"Me? Oh hell no. I - I learned it."

"Oh. What made you learn how to become ambidextrous?"

I take a moment to recall exactly that time. What was it again? It's been a while...

Was it the knives? Or was it the guns? I remember those times clearly, but it's just hard to tell which of them forced me to teach myself how to use both hands at once.

"Hm. Let's just say..." I decide to answer, "...practicality."

"...practicality?"

"Yeah. I learned it because I felt I had to."

"Oh..."

Matthew doesn't ask me anything more after that. I get the feeling that she wants, to, but she's getting the sense that she shouldn't. Or maybe I'm just putting words in her head by this point, who knows.

True to my word, after exactly three minutes and forty-one seconds, I finish my data entry, print out the invoices, and set them in my scanner to have them scanned so that I can send the invoices off to my customers via email. After filing them into their respective folders and setting those folders back in their rack, I get up and magically set my work computer to sleep before turning to Matthew.

"Alright, I'm done for the morning. You eat lunch yet?" I ask Matthew, who shakes her head.

"That was actually what I was going to ask you about too," she admits, giving me a shy smile, "but...I forgot to ask..."

"Oh, really? That's fine, though. We can go make something now, if you want."

Matthew nods, and together we leave my bedroom/office, with Fou hopping off my bed to trail us, and we head down the stairs. I sense Lily in the living room, probably sitting on the couch there, and when the two of us come down, I glance over and find Lily indeed sitting on the couch with a book in her hands, reading with the most elegant of postures _The Tale of Desperaux_ \- damn, I haven't read that book since I was fourteen.

"So I'm guessing that Servants also come summoned with the ability to read English?" I ask Matthew.

"The FATE system actually summons them in such a way that they are able to communicate with any human being in the world so that they can ignore the language barriers that would otherwise be in place," Matthew explains quietly, so as not to distract Lily while she's reading. "Normally, without this magical mechanism, they wouldn't be able to communicate with you because they would only be able to speak in their native languages."

"So...it's basically an omniscient translator, then."

"Um...it's a little bit more complicated than just a simple translator, but if that's how you want to look at it..."

"I mean, it's a pretty good reference point to start off on..."

The combination of us stepping down onto the second floor and our chattering makes Lily finally privy to our presence, and alarmed that she hasn't greeted me yet when I've stepped into her line of sight, Lily cries out haplessly and practically flings aside the book onto the next couch over as she quickly follows after us, catching up when we're in the kitchen.

"Hey. Do you wanna have lunch?" I ask Lily, raising a hand to greet her as I'm already digging through the fridge to decide on what kind of meal we should have today.

"Yes, Master! Uh, uh, uh, I-I mean - !" Lily, suddenly overcome with embarrassment at how easily she gets distracted by the mention of food, grabs her flaming cheeks and shakes her head to and fro. "I-I sincerely beg your pardon for not greeting you properly, Master!"

"Well, we found you reading a book, so I figured you wouldn't wanna be distracted."

Lily moans softly, trying her best to contain her embarrassment as I set out some potatoes, carrots, eggs, duck meat, and bacon.

"What will you make today, Senpai?" Matthew asks curiously, and she definitely sounds like she wants to help make lunch with me.

"A stir fry," I answer. "It's quick and easy, and I've gotten pretty good at makin' 'em."

"Would you like me to help?"

"Uh, if you insist, then I suppose so, yeah. If you can cut the potatoes, that'd be nice."

"I-I'd like to help too, Master, if you'd allow me," Lily also volunteers. "But...but I think I should mention that I've...never really...cooked before, so...i-if you wouldn't like me to help, then I will just content myself to sitting and waiting..."

"No, you can help if you want. I'll show you what to do."

Three quarters of an hour and many mishaps with Lily's various adorable failures at cooking later, I set down Matthew's and Lily's plates before them, both of whom gasp softly with delight at the comforting scent of freshly cooked, diced potatoes with bacon slices, duck meat pieces, and cut carrots, all gently browned to perfection.

"Th-Thank you for the food as always, Master!" Lily exclaims with the same degree of appreciation as before. I can get used to this, I tell myself as I watch Lily start stuffing herself, as more lilies begin to sprout out of nowhere around her, and Fou, curious about them, walks up to one on the floor to give it a quick sniff.

"So, I'd just like to ask, but is there anything the Servants can do to help to detect the singularity once it hits?" I ask Matthew, who's currently also savoring the gently fried potatoes and bacon. I've always liked my bacon slow-fried and cooked with not too much grease, and I figured the girls would like it the same way. So far, it seems like they do.

"Um...I suggest that you send us out on patrol. Night patrols are best because naturally, less people are around during nighttime," Matthew reasons. "But if you'd like, you can also send us out on daytime patrols. We'd just need civilian clothing to help us blend in and not be so, uh...conspicuous."

"Yeeaaaah..." I drag out the word, the image of Matthew's near-ridiculous costume emblazoned into my mind. "I...agree completely. Not sure how I feel 'bout sending you out in that costume you wear when you turn into your Demi-Servant form."

"Y-You didn't have to bring that up!" Matthew balks, yowling suddenly. "I'm fully aware of the fact that the clothing I wear as a Servant isn't exactly the most flattering!"

"I mean, in _some_ respects, it actually is, to be honest..."

"Senpai, you pervert!"

"Not my fault, I wasn't the one who designed that thing for you. In fact, I wanna ask, do you know who did?"

"Uh...n-no, it...when I first became a Demi-Servant, it kind of...just...came with it."

I scratch my head a little bit incredulously - I get the feeling that I'm going to use that word a lot in the near future.

"Y-You look like you don't believe me, Senpai..." Matthew murmurs worriedly, forking her stir-fried potatoes and carrots.

"Oh, no, I believe you, it's just...it'd be really nice to know the thing or person who decided that _that_ was the best thing you could wear."

"Um...w-why would you like to know...?"

"Oh, y'know...sit 'em down, give 'em a cup of tea, and have a _real, nice long conversation with 'em..."_

"Y-You really don't have to worry about it _that_ much..."

Sighing, I stab a juicy piece of duck meat with my own fork. Being a Korean-American, I've gotten complacent and become a dirty American by resorting to relying only on forks, defecting forever from the chopsticks-master-race peoples known as Asians. Well, that's not entirely true, I still do use chopsticks and am proficient in their use whenever I have to, it's just that _forks are kind of really easy to use..._

"Yeah, you're right. Just a costume..."

We spend the rest of our lunch in silence, working away on our food until there's nothing left on our plates. Since I'm a fast eater, I find myself finished before the other two, though Matthew isn't far behind, and Lily _really_ likes to take her time with the food today. She even lifts up her plate to lick off the light bacon grease and starch from the potatoes right off the plate, because apparently she thinks it's just that good, and when she lowers her plate, she finds me, Matthew, _and_ Fou all gazing at her, watching her do this.

"Ah..."

Slowly lowering her plate down onto the table, Lily drops her gaze, letting her bright blonde bangs hide her eyes as her face goes adorably red yet again.

"It's fine, it's fine," I try to reassure her, smiling at her frequent bouts of embarrassment. "I'm glad you like my food that much. I don't have that much experience cooking for other people, y'know, so...I was kinda nervous that maybe either of you wouldn't like it..."

"Oh, no, no, the food - the food is fantastic, Senpai!" Matthew quickly reassures me right back, starting to smile quite warmly as she's done before. "I'm very grateful that I've been able to have the opportunity to eat home-cooked meals like this. The food back at Chaldea was good, but...at the end of the day, it's just cafeteria food, after all..."

"Oh God, _cafeteria food_..." I roll my eyes more dramatically than need be. To be fair, my high school cafeteria food actually wasn't bad at all, I'm just going off the usual stereotype that cafeteria food in American public schools is absolute ass.

"I-It wasn't that bad, to be honest," Matthew says quickly - wow, such deja vu.

"Then thank God for home-cooked food, am I right," I declare, getting up from my seat to take my plate and reaching for Matthew's and Lily's, but they both grab their own plates quickly before I can do that for them and stand up from their own chairs.

"W-We can help," Lily insists, perhaps trying to redeem herself after her little moment.

Once we get the the dishes washed and the frying pan that I used to cook the food also washed and scrubbed clean, since I'm not a fan of leaving dishes and plates inside the kitchen sink to pile up as the week goes on, I tell the girls to meet me in the living room, where Lily was staying reading her book. I head upstairs into my room, open up one of the two big mirror sliding walls that hide what's essentially a big closet meant for storing clothes and other miscellaneous junk that you want to keep hidden from guests, but since I don't own that many clothes to warrant filling up a huge closet like this, it's mostly filled with boxes, themselves filled with nothing but manila folders that contain the paperworks of previous shipments that I've worked on over the years. It's not just me being a gosh-darn pack rat, freight forwarders like me by US law have to keep records of the shipments they process for at least seven or so years - or something like that, I could be getting the number of years wrong. Point is, we're mandated to have records of shipments we work on so that in case the government finds out that a certain shipment containing counterfeit goods entered the country at some point, they're going to track down the freight forwarder who processed the shipment and send the damn fuzz - in this case, the FBI - to them to investigate, and if you don't have the paperwork for that one shipment 'cause you thought that it'd been cleared a long time ago and you threw it all away like a dumbass, well...off to prison you go.

And I'd rather not be in prison. It's not the greatest place on Earth...trust me, I'd know. And you know how the police and government law enforcement agencies are these days...not worth the trouble.

Other than the stacks of heavy boxes filled with folders and papers, in the very middle, behind the low wall of boxes stand three metal cases, and I reach over and pull them all out. One of them is a rectangular case, a very long one, while the other two are the same size, much smaller, box-like cases. I stack the smaller two on top of the big long case (definitely no innuendo there, no sir) and lift them all up together and carry them downstairs to the living room. The girls watch me with keen interest as I join them and sit down in the middle of the room, on the carpet that sits in the middle too, in front of the couches and that supports the low glass table that also stands in front of the couches. I don't set down the metal cases on the glass table, for good reason, instead setting them down in front of me, a little ways away from the glass table.

"What are those, Master?" Lily asks curiously, watching me with Matthew and Fou as I hold my hands over both of the smaller metal cases.

"You'll see...it's related to what I wanted to talk about," I murmur, my focus on the metal cases. The cases have built-in lock dials on them, but they turn on their own as I simply hold my hands over them, small blue circular runes appearing over the lock dials. Once they've been flipped to their correct numbers, the metal cases make a soft but distinct pair of _click!_ 's to notify that they've been unlocked, and I open them up.

A pair of Magnum Research Desert Eagle handguns gaze back up at me. Polished Chrome, chambered for .44 Magnum to make their uses legal in the state of California, 6-inch barrel with a muzzle brake, with custom finishes - the one on my left is beautifully painted blue and white, while the one on my right is just as equally dressed with red and black.

As I pull them both out of their cases, both of the girls stare in wonder, not knowing what they are. Well, scratch that, I'm sure they both know what these are, but it's probably their first time actually seeing two of them in person like this.

"Th-Those are...pistols, right?" Matthew asks timidly, pointing a shy finger at them as I set them down on the edge of the glass table near me.

"Yeah. These are my close-range weapons of choice...since I'm honestly a lazy-ass mage, and just shooting people is a lot easier," I shrug, closing the Desert Eagles' cases and setting them aside for now. "That, and they're a lot more fun to play with."

I open the next case, the big one, and from the inside, out peeks a rifle - an Armalite AR-10. Urban digital hex camouflage (totally unnecessary, I only ordered it because I thought it looked cool), chambered for .308 Winchester/7.62x51mm, eighteen-inch barrel, and a ten-round mag capacity to, again, make it legal in the state of California. 1:10''RH rifling twist, standard Armalite tunable muzzle brake, MBA-1 lightweight precision buttstock, MIL-STD 1913 rail with 7075-T6 aluminum forged lower receiver, ambi safety, Timney trigger with a four-pound trigger pull, and ambi charging handle. I've always fancied AR-15 platform rifles - I don't know why, again, I just think they're pretty cool.

This time, Matthew has no words as I also stand my AR-10 rifle up by its stock, leaning it gently against the side of the glass table. For the sake of gun safety, I pull back the slides of the two Desert Eagles to verify that they're empty and pull open the action on the AR-10 to do the same, and all three guns are unloaded and magazine-less.

"Don't touch these, I'll be right back - gotta grab a few things," I tell the girls, and I hurry off back to my room to retrieve my gun-cleaning supplies that I keep in another smaller box and bring that down too. I also stop by the small cabinets that are on the third floor in between my room and the guest rooms and take a nice, clean blanket too to spread over the carpet so that the gun-cleaning won't ruin my carpet. Armed with these materials, I head back down to the living room and resume my seat after spreading out the blanket, setting down my guns onto the blankets now that it's safe for me to set them down on the floor.

"These are...weapons, yes?" Lily asks hesitantly, watching me as I swiftly begin to disassemble my Desert Eagles first, with my AR-10 waiting for its own cleaning patiently to my right side.

"Right. They're called firearms - these ones that I'm working on right now are called handguns or pistols, and the one next to me to my right is called a rifle," I explain while I pop the barrels out with the takedown buttons and remove the recoil springs. "What I'm doing right now is maintenance - gun cleaning. I haven't used these a while, and since we've got this singularity that we've gotta deal with coming up soon at any time, I figured it'd be a good time now while I have the chance to clean them so that they're in the best condition possible when I need 'em."

The girls watch me as I complete field-stripping the handguns. Once they're field-stripped, I start with their barrels, taking a few clean pieces of white rags, spraying some Break-Free CLP cleaner lubricant, and stuffing them through the barrels with a Tipton palmer pick.

"So what I wanted to talk to you two about was how we're going to fight," I tell them, my eyes fixed on my guns as I clean them through and through. "Since Lily's a Saber-Class, and since we've seen you with your sword, we know that you'll handle the brunt of the fighting, up close and personal. I assume that you're kind of the same role, right, Matthew?"

"Uh, yes. I will be fighting alongside Miss Lily and protect her as she fights," Matthew nods firmly.

"Okay. So that means that, for the two of you to be melee fighters, it'd probably be a good idea to have a ranged fighter to handle ranged opponents, should they show up, since you two'll have trouble dealing with enemies who can attack you from afar. I'll fill that role, and I'll take care of anyone who's out of your reach, since they won't be out of mine with these."

Matthew nods firmly again. "We've...only ever heard of a few mages who're willing to fight with modern weapons like these. That's so cool that you like to use these, too. Most everyone usually sticks with traditional practices of magecraft..."

I simply give her a shrug. "I mean, there're lots'a modern technologies that mages can take advantage of nowadays; they just don't for whatever reason."

Once I finish with the cleaning, since the guns, including the AR-10, themselves don't really need a whole lot, I reassemble them back together quickly. I excuse myself again and return to my room for a third time - I probably should've just brought everything down at once - and this time, I bring down yet another large metal case, this time filled with nothing but spare empty magazines for my Desert Eagles and AR-10 and ammunition: twenty boxes of Federal Premium Hydra-Shock P44HSA 240JHP and fifteen boxes of AMM-727 7.62x51mm. Except, when I slide the bullet carriers out, all of the bullets are empty - they're all just casings.

I take the spare empty mags and put them next to their respective guns - fifty magazines for my pistols, fifty mags for my rifle. (This box is _huge._ ) I take the empty bullets and, one by one, fill them with mana, condensing them into a state where they can keep their own solid form as bullet-like entities within the casings, and then load them, one by one, into the magazines. I do this until all of my empty spare magazines are filled with magical ammo.

"...this seems like a lot of work, Senpai..." Matthew murmurs, almost like she's feeling sorry for me.

"It is," I agree wholeheartedly.

"If it is so much work simply to maintain your weapons, Master, do you believe that these 'firearms' are worth this much maintenance in combat?" Lily also asks.

"Oh, yeah, definitely. I wouldn't use them if they weren't worth it to take with me to fights. Besides, you're a knight, right? You of all people should know how tedious it is to prepare your equipment."

Lily looks quite bewildered.

"Um...o-on the contrary, Master, my...my mana is able to magically maintain my sword," Lily corrects me.

"So does mine," Matthew adds. "I don't have to maintain my shield because my mana will automatically take care of it after battles over time."

I give the two of them less-than-pleased looks.

"How nice it must be for you," I mutter quite dryly.

"But you can do the same, can't you? You're a mage, after all, Senpai," Matthew insists.

I simply shrug again. "I dunno. I like taking the time to take care of my equipment like this. I think it's pretty fun. Maybe it doesn't look that way to you, and I understand, but...I suppose, to each their own."

With all of the magazines loaded, I snap a mag of ten magic bullets into my AR-10, but I don't pull back the charging handle since there's no reason for me to load the gun right now. Instead, I raise the rifle and point it away from the girls, instead aiming in the direction of my kitchen where there is no one there, with my finger safely resting against the side of the trigger guard. As I hold my rifle, on the sightless rail appears another blue magic rune that swirls clockwise into view and magically zooms in everything that the rune itself covers in my line of sight, even providing me a convenient red dot in the center to facilitate my aim. I control how much mana I'm putting into the scope, and the zoom level fluctuates to my will, warping back out to a normal field of view, then zipping back to a deep zoom for long-range, and then reverting back to a smaller zoom level for medium-range engagements.

Now that my rifle is ready for combat again, I release the mag, set it down, and open the rifle's bolt to double-check that it's indeed unloaded. I then grasp the rifle by the front of its stock and by the middle of the long eighteen-inch barrel, and two runes appear at the ends of the weapon, swiftly swallowing up the rifle out of view and taking it from my hands. I do the same with my Desert Eagles, and then finally with all the magazines of magic ammo that I've made.

Once everything's ready, I clap my hands together once.

"Now we're ready for some hunting," I nod with a small grin.


	6. Night Entourage

**Chapter 6: Night Entourage**

* * *

Nighttime. After I get my portion of evening work out of the way and after I feed my servants with a light supper with the promise that I'd fix some more food for them upon arriving back home after our little outing tonight, I take Matthew and Lily outside in my Mercedes to give them a quick tour of my town, Tierra del Illamas; in hindsight, I probably should have given them this little tour _before_ the nighttime run, but I had a few important calls to make in the afternoon, ones that kind of crept up out of nowhere...damn trucking companies, I feel like I may have to take some time on a weekend or something to search for better ones, which I'm sure I'll be able to, given the fact that small trucking businesses are as numerous as convenience stores...well, not exactly, I'm exaggerating, but I think the analogy still stands a little.

"So about these Command Spells," I mention to Matthew. No one is sitting shotgun, so I have to turn my head a little to make it clear that I'm speaking to them, which should've been obvious in the first place so long as they're paying attention, which they are, while slow-tempo glitch hop bounces from my car's speakers. "I know that if I use them, I can order any Servant of mine to obey any order. But that seems really...I don't know, _general._ Could you describe the extent of their, uh, abilities, I guess?"

"Yes, of course. The Command Spells, like you said, can be given to any of your Servants and have them obey one command of your choice," Matthew begins to explain. "They're very powerful, Senpai. So powerful, in fact, that your Command Spells can give your Servants the ability to even break natural laws of space and time to heed your order; that, and a Servant who is issued such a command from your Command Spell _must_ obey it, no matter what their own feelings about it may be."

"How convenient," I chortle sarcastically, but only with a light touch of sarcasm. "So then, uh, do you have like an example that you can tell me about? Just to give me an idea?"

"Well, there have been well-documented cases of Masters ordering their Servants to rescue them from a bad situation when said Servants were physically a long distance away, and they were able to warp straight to their Masters and protect them in time."

"Like how far of a distance are we talking? Do you know?"

"Uhh...I want to say...maybe anywhere from one to five kilometers?"

"But it can go farther than that?"

"The nature of the Command Spells allows Servants to do things that normally would be impossible, given the world's natural laws, like I said. So yes, I imagine that the distance can be much longer, if there's any real maximum limit at all." Matthew clears her throat while she adjusts her glasses. "You should also know that the strength of Command Spells depend on both the capability and will of the Master using them, and that the type of order given when issuing a Command Spell changes the strength of the Spell. So naturally, the more gifted of a mage you are, the stronger your Command Spells will be; simple enough. But the type of command also affects Command Spell strength because in the end, the Command Spells are an advanced type of magecraft, and giving something like a broad order causes the magic in a Spell to be spread over a long period of time, usually. As opposed to a more direct, a more momentarily action or order, which is _very_ powerful, to the point where the Servant who is issued that Command Spell order will feel like his or her body is simply moving on its own without any regard for his or her own will. Generally speaking, unless you are a powerful enough mage, Command Spells are not intended to be used for generalized, broad orders; they are only meant to command your Servants to overcome a particular instance in which complete obedience is deemed necessary. Oh, but so long as you get along with your Servants, you shouldn't really need them. Most of the time, anyway."

"Lily's getting along just fine, so does that mean I'm on the right track?" I ask light-heartedly.

"Hopefully so, Senpai. Oh, and there is something else I'd like to add, now that I think about it."

"And that is?"

"For the purposes of this singularity, the Command Spells that you have received to denote your status as a Master is a weaker form of the Command Spells that usually would be used in conflicts like the Holy Grail War. So while you can use them to the same potential as standard types of Command Spells, just know that in general, they're considerably weaker, so there is a chance that even for direct, explicit orders, your Servants may be able to resist them if they are willful or powerful enough, or both."

"Great."

"But the Command Spells that you have are purposefully made weaker so that they can recharge on their own, one per day. That's the trade-off that your Command Spells have - they can regenerate on their own, in exchange for less authority and absolution."

"Hm. So...what would be the point of having Command Spells if I happen to get along with everyone, to the point where they'd follow any order I give them, regardless of me using Command Spells or not?"

"Ermm..." Matthew falls silent for a moment. "A-As a safety precaution, I think...? Servants _can_ become corrupted and be forced against their will to act against you, their own Master, so...I'm thinking maybe a Command Spell can help bring them back, even if it's only for a few moments...?"

"Hm. So as a contingency plan, then."

"Yeah...s-something like that."

"Doesn't sound like a reliable one, though."

"Well, it all depends on how well you know your Command Spells and how effectively you use them. For the reasons I've stated, they can obviously be either very powerful, or...not so powerful."

"Yeah, I figured..."

We begin to pass Meridian Park that we've visited yesterday night, after successfully summoning Lily through her Summoning Ticket, and I point out towards the shotgun window to motion to it as we pass.

"So that's Meridian Park we're passing right now, obviously. If in case we have to have battles here against strong people, this's the place where you wanna come to to fight 'em. I've got a few emergency runes set up here, like Presence Concealments and minor mana transfers and healing that'll go off when it detects any of you coming in and about to fight; those runes are passive, so they'll automatically trigger when they sense that you're in combat. On top of which, it's got a whole section of open ground beyond the benches on the far side of the park, so in case you need that extra space, the runes I've set up here stretch all the way down."

"...wait a minute, Senpai, you only had that one Presence Concealment rune active when we summoned Lily," Matthew points out, taking a moment to think about the events of last evening. "Since when did you set up more? Or were they always there?"

"Just before we left the park," I reply.

"But...you were with us. We all walked together back to the car."

"Yeah, I know."

Matthew falls silent. The song that was playing finishes, transitioning to another song, this time some electronic house, something like the chill music you'd find playing at a semi-formal restaurant or a classy bar, creating an ambience that really matches the soothing cool blue lights that my car has on to decorate the interior, running underneath the dashboard and along the sides of the doors, just over the handlebars.

I continue driving down the main road, past a supermarket and down to yet another park, this one called Pipper Park. The entrance is blocked off by a big metal rotating arm, indicating that the park is closed for the day, but I still pull into the driveway that leads further down into the de-elevated parking lot beyond the metal gate and shut off the engine, exiting my car and leaving it parked right in front of the gate, with enough room to back up and exit when we return.

"I-Is it alright for us to park here like this...?" Matthew asks worriedly, joining Lily as the two of them follow after me while I duck underneath one of the bars of the gate made of steel bars as thick as the ones they use to make basketball hoops. As soon as she emerges from the car, Lily magically equips her armor, which is evident by the sharp clacking of steel plates behind me, and once I'm past the gate by simply ducking underneath it, I turn around to observe Lily's battle outfit, and sure enough, she, too, ducks underneath the gate with Matthew in her armor that seems to make her glow just a little bit subtly in the pitch darkness illuminated only by the nearby street lights and the lights radiating off the intersection lights that control the traffic that would come into the park during the day.

"This isn't really a combat mission, so you don't really _need_ to be in full armor right now," I reassure Lily, but Lily firmly stands up to me, grasping her sword handle with both of her metal gloved-hands.

"I am a knight in training, Master. I must always remind myself that I must be ready to do battle, even during times when we are to least expect it," Lily declares, trying her best to be serious and charismatic, but her cuteness bleeds through too much for me to be able to take her seriously, though I don't show or tell her that. "And as a Servant, I must be able to protect my Master."

Well, I figure it's not really worth it to make a fuss over something like this, so I nod back at her. "Okay, fair enough. Follow me."

We begin to walk down the sloped road that leads into, as I said before, the long parking lot reserved for the cars of park visitors. It looks deceptively small at first, but that's only until you realize that the parking lot itself, while only having a single row of parking spaces, is _very_ long, meaning that it actually can hold a big number of cars, and if space happens to run out, there's enough space along the sides and an additional albeit smaller parking lot on the other side of the park too that the park employees can open up in case there are special events going on. And as we head down, careful with our steps while walking down this somewhat unnecessarily steep road and sidewalk, I glance over at Lily momentarily.

"How are you liking it so far, Lily?" I ask. "'Cause, like, I'm sure this world is a lot different than how you remember it, not to mention us being...what, five thousand miles or something from your home country...? Or is it six thousand...? Might be more, might be less..."

"Ah...i-it's very pleasant, Master," Lily hurriedly says. "And I'm...I am not just referring to all the excellent food, of course, I - "

"...you're still hungry, aren't you."

"N-No, no, of - of course not, Master, I - I wouldn't - "

Lily is a terrible liar. Just from the sound of her voice stumbling multiple times and starting to crack so easily I can tell that the light dinner clearly wasn't enough to satisfy her hunger, though I kind of knew what to expect with the first few times I've made food for her. And just to confirm, I glance over my shoulder as we're walking and find Lily to be purposely looking away, trying very hard not to make eye contact, but she does anyway on accident when she sees me glance over at her out of the corner of her eye.

"It's fine, like I said, I'll make you some more when we get back," I smile a little, facing forward again to make sure I'm not about to trip over anything while going down the slope. "No, I'm just asking because this place...this town, rather, of Tierra del Illamas, it's a special place in that it naturally generates a good amount of magic energy, raw mana. I think the correct term for this place would be a 'Spiritual Land'...? Correct me if I'm wrong..."

"Raw natural mana...no wonder," Matthew muses quietly.

"No wonder what?"

"Well...ever since we started living here, I've been noticing that my body's mana circulation has been more...active, like it's flowing through my body better and more efficiently. I thought maybe it was because of the food you were cooking, or maybe a result of your own mana being passively transferred to us due to the contract we have as Servant and Master, or maybe even because of this town's really good weather...but now that you mention it..."

"That's certainly true!" Lily agrees cheerfully. "I was worrying when I was summoned that I would have trouble maintaining my mana, but thankfully if the land is providing a steady level of mana for me, that means I don't have to burden Master with it..."

"What do you mean, not burden me with it?" I ask for clarification.

"Oh! Um...uh..." Lily gets all flustered again, but this time because she's trying to put her thoughts into words. "Well, you see, Master, I - you sounded like you were familiar with my legend, right?"

"Yeah, a little bit. Like the general stuff, not too deep into the details, though, so sorry about that."

"No, please, um, you don't have to be...well, my heart is...I possess the heart of a dragon, and it generates a level of mana that is usually much stronger than many other Heroic Spirits who can be summoned into Servants like me, but that also causes me to consume much more mana, should I use up a lot of it in fighting. And...well, naturally, my Master would have to be one of the major sources of mana in those times, so...that's why I said that it is a good thing if the land itself can supply mana naturally."

"But Senpai, how does this land generate mana on its own?" Matthew asks while we reach a flight of stairs that leads down to the park's main office, which is the only real structure here in the park. It's quite a tall flight of stairs, by the way, since, in case you couldn't tell by now, this park is sort of built into the side of a hill, with a main administration office and a single basketball court sitting side by side before you climb down _another_ flight of stairs to get to the actual park itself, complete with a kid's playground. It's complicated; you'd have to be here to really get what's going on. "I don't think I have heard of this place...usually lands that are capable of generating mana are recorded in Chaldea's magic registries..."

"I'm not totally sure, actually," I shrug, admitting my ignorance freely. "I've tried figuring out why, but...all my tests come up inconclusive, or I just didn't find anything at all. All I know is that I'm sure this land produces natural mana on its own. It's not a _lot_ , though, to be fair, so that's probably why no one really knows of this place."

"That's...that's true, it's definitely not _too_ much..." Matthew agrees. "But it's definitely noticeable at the same time."

We reach the top of the next flight of stairs that will take us down to the kid's playground, but we stop there, since it gives us a very good panoramic view of the rest of the rolling grass fields that make up the rest of the park, aside from the baseball field off to our left and the extra picnic tables way down to our far right.

"And...I forgot to ask before when we got out of the car, but...are you sure we can be here right now, Senpai?" Matthew asks, again in her worried, concerned tone. "The gate was locked and everything...and the park hours clearly said that this place is closed..."

"They don't really care that much," I shrug nonchalantly this time. "We're not gonna get in trouble for lurking around here. This town's really safe...not really much in way of criminal activity on its own. The people who work here won't even bother coming to check the park during nighttime anyway - and if they really wanted to, the town's rich enough to have a surveillance system installed here."

I resume gazing out to the rolling grass fields briefly.

"This park is also another good place to have a battle if you need to," I nod to my Servants. "Again, it's got the same passive runes installed here as the ones back at Meridian Park. Come here if you're fighting a strong Servant or something, and my runes should help you out a little."

"Maintaining so many runes like this..." Matthew murmurs aloud, looking out to the fields while Lily gazes in subtle astonishment at the beautiful nighttime landscape of a somewhat starry sky, the dark sea painted with the black of the night off in the far distance, and the rolling grass fields below. "Just how much mana do you use to keep them up, Senpai?"

"Not...a lot, I guess?" I scratch my head, trying to think, feeling a nice, cool night breeze kick up against us. "I dunno, I've never thought it was a problem. The passive runes, I mean."

"And not to mention, they don't really...resemble any that I'm used to seeing."

"Oh, that's because my runes are custom-made. I had to teach myself, really...didn't any real proper tutoring from anyone..."

"C-Custom-made?!" Matthew balks, and I just glance at her oddly, having the look that asks her if she's alright. "But...if they're custom-made, then that means you haven't been practicing magecraft for a long time, right?"

"Hmm..." I recount the years that I've been considered a mage...or, well, considered _myself_ a mage. "I first started _learning_ back in, what, 2011, when just about when I was a senior in high school...are you counting the years I was under training, or no?"

"Either way, that's a very short time to have gotten good at rune construction and general magic application." Matthew is staring at me like I'm a freak of nature, though it won't be the first time I see someone give me that look, and I doubt it'll be the last. "Senpai, does...does Miss Olga know about this? About how short of a time you've been practicing magic?"

I smile casually, almost breaking into a chuckle. "Well, I mean, for starters, the two of us have never even met in person, and I've never really given her my personal details like age or whatnot..."

_"You two never even met...?!"_

"Let's not go flying off the stairs here, it's kinda dangerous here at the top." I raise a hand at Matthew slowly to try to get her to compose herself, which she does, thankfully. "I'll explain: basically, I've only ever seen in her person once, a few years ago, when I attended the Contract Magi Conference, the orientation for contract mages like me to attend to acclimate us to working with Chaldea. I know what she looks like and who she is, but on an individual level, Olga doesn't know us, unless we've gone specifically out of our way to meet with her, which I didn't. But I'm a little curious to know why you're so intrigued...like, I mean I _know_ that the number of years I've been doing the whole mage thing doesn't really add up with how good I am with it, but I don't think I'm _that_ great...I'm sure there're a ton of mages out there who're stronger than me as far as magecraft application goes."

"Er...yes, I'm...I'm sorry, Senpai," Matthew clears her throat, deciding to refrain from balking any more. "I-I was...I was only asking because...it's very surprising to know that you've established such a mastery of magic, both in such a short time and without any sort of magical family background to give you any additional magic potential or capability. At least, that's what we saw from your portfolio that you submitted for the Chaldean contract mercenary records..."

"Yeah, I don't have any magic family. None that I remember, anyway." I clear my own throat this time to get back to the task at hand. "Anyways, hope you two got a good look at this place, 'cause we'll be moving on."

Lily, listening quietly to me and Matthew patiently and diligently, takes in one last good look at the park, giving off a bit of a pensive smile before turning and realizing that I've been watching her, and when I smile quietly back at her, she quickly turns her eyes away, a little embarrassed at what she must've been looking like when gazing out to the nighttime, moonlit scenery of the park. I beckon for them to follow so that we can return to the car, and we head back up the stairs, and I listen to the clinking of Lily's holy sword, Caliburn, as it bumps against the metal railings on Lily's side.

Once we all pile back into the car, Lily unequipping her armor so that she can fit more comfortably inside the car and so that she can avoid scratching up my Mercedes, I pull the car out of the blocked-off driveway so that we can continue on.

"Um...now that I think about it, since your magecraft is clearly very good, couldn't you just have just given us this tour from your home? Like...visualization magecraft? Or is it that maybe you don't excel in that field?"

"Uhhh...I think I can do it, all I'd have to do is memory application," I call back, looking at Matthew through the rear-view mirror. "But not only have I never done that, but I think it's just better if I physically take you two around and show you two the places where I'd like you to see and know; it's obviously a lot different coming to these places yourselves and getting to know what the place looks like and feels like, rather than looking at it through memory projection. Nothing ever beats the real thing...that, and I really like driving at night in this town. It's relaxing."

"I-I also really like it too, Master!" Lily reassures me. "Before I became a Servant, my own life, I traveled Britain far and wide with my brother Kay and my attendant Merlin. It is important to travel and get to know the people and the land, very important."

"Although we're basically just doing some sight-seeing, is what it all boils down to," I remark. "But it's nice that you like traveling."

"Do you like traveling too, Master?"

"Me? Uhhh...yeah, I guess I like it. A lot, actually...but usually I'm pretty content to just stay at home. I only ever really travel if it's for business. I don't really go out of my way to travel just for my own pleasure...though sometimes I wonder why I don't when I've got the time."

"If you do get the time, I'd love to show you around Britain! If you're, um, interested in seeing the places I saw in my time..." Lily says shyly.

"Britain, huh. I've actually been there once..." I frown, though. "Friggin' Mage's Association, though...yeck."

"So you know of the Mages' Association, huh, Senpai..." Matthew asks hesitantly.

"Yeah...and as you can probably tell, I'm not a fan. Even if I don't like Olga, at least Chaldea's pretty open about who they contract with as their mercenary mages and they're generally pretty chill with us, comfortable with us being part-time employees who can just come and go freely without feeling heavily obligated to dedicating ourselves to their resources. Not that Chaldea provides us with much in the first place, so I guess there's no point in me saying that..."

"I-I can take you to other places, Master..." Lily mumbles, clearly wondering if she's accidentally stepped on a land mine for me. "Places that, um, don't remind you of this...Mages' Association..."

"Of course. Maybe when we have the time, or even the opportunity," I say quickly, not really wanting Lily to get worried over me.

"Why don't you like the Mages' Association, Senpai?"

"Bunch'a fucking half-ass mages too high off the smell of their own assholes that they clearly don't wipe," I casually drop some profanities that clearly catch the two girls off guard, since they're not used to hearing me swear. It makes me wonder how Lily takes it, whether or not she really fully understands the insults I'm lobbing around. "It's an institution that promotes secretism, discrimination, and egoism. If I understand it correctly, which I'm sure I may be missing out on a lot of details, if only because I didn't bother learning more about them during my time there, the way the Mages' Association is structured is deliberately intended to create internal friction among its members due to the things I mentioned, about secretism, discrimination, and egoism. It instigates selfishness and greed, and I feel like those things tend to make people in the Mages' Association just generally not very pleasant people, and I don't think I have the patience to deal with them, and I certainly don't want to see if I do."

"If...it makes you feel any better, the Chaldean Security Organization isn't too fond of them either," Matthew testifies. "I believe Miss Olga's father was part of the Mages' Association, but she herself is not, because of Chaldea. In other words, her father left her with enough to afford not having to join the Mages' Association, but...as a result, the Mages' Association tends to ostracize her and Chaldea..."

"Figured as such. I wouldn't be surprised at all if war breaks out between the two, and Olga needs me to come on over and fight against the Association. Not that I'd have a problem with that..."

"I think we would prefer _not_ having war with them...Chaldea is too young of an organization, and even if it contracts out mercenary mages from around the world, the Association possesses too many talented and strong mages for us to handle."

"Pity. I'd bet their arrogance would still get in the way and fuck 'em up, though."

"But do we want to risk that?"

"Probably not." I sigh a little. "I'll just stick to my little town in this obscure corner of America. That's good enough for me."

I drive across one final intersection to pull the car up into a small road that leads into another parking lot, this time one for a hub of trails that sprawls with the roads that run on either side of the intersection behind us. Again, the parking lot is empty, as it is about half-past nine, according to the clock on my car's dashboard.

"We won't go too far, since this's basically the start of a series of trails that run through this area," I explain, pointing off into the directions of the trails that lead away from us. "But as you can see, the ocean is right over that way; if we were to drive further down to our right, we can eventually find places to reach the beach."

"W-Wow..." Lily can't help but express her fascination. "So many beautiful sights, and even with access to the sea...this town is amazing, Master."

"It's a nice place, for sure. I like it a lot too," I nod in agreement. "Nice 'n quiet, and you get to go wherever you want, whenever you want, without anyone bothering you. Nice weather, natural mana from the earth...yup."

I put my hands on my hips, glancing straight up into the black night sky. The moon is out tonight again in full force, shining mightily with the reflections of the sun's light back down to our own secluded little corner of the earth.

"Damn shame when this singularity drops," I murmur unenthusiastically.

"Don't worry, Senpai. We'll do our best to protect it," Matthew reassures me confidently and quietly, and Lily nods strongly too, gripping Caliburn especially tightly while setting it down gently against the ground.


	7. A King's Journey

**Chapter 7: A King's Journey**

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**A/N:**

**Frenzy307: If I recall correctly, I think the guaranteed gold card can apply to both Craft Essences and Servants, because the 10-rolls guarantee you an SR, but it can be a 4-star Craft** **Essence. But maybe you're right, but I unfortunately forgot which 4-stars I received during my initial rolls. I'll have to dig through my account and try to remember which ones they were - and also remember that this story is only loosely based on the game, I may take liberties here and there with representation of the game's mechanics and, of course, my own recollections of playing the game.**

**-Akyuu no Joshu**

* * *

Monotonous typing fills my head as my fingers fly and drill the keys of my Razer Blackwidow. Sometimes I wonder to myself if getting a gaming keyboard for my work computer was really necessary, but then the moment I begin typing on it, I forget all my doubts, because I realize just how much I love the sound of loud cherry keys.

This is your cue, as the reader, to call me weird.

While typing data into my data logging software for my business, I glance quickly down at the lower-right corner of my computer monitor. April 21st, half past ten in the morning...and I'm already almost done with work. Well, not that that's a big surprise...in the shipping and freight-forwarding business, like many other standardized, internationalized business where weekends are typically work-free, Fridays tend to be a little slow, since everyone's looking forward to the weekend and overall productivity levels plummet as a result. Not that I fault anyone in particular, I myself can be pretty guilty of this too. After all, it's the weekend...that's more than enough of a reason to slack off on work, and that's a universal mentality across all first-world cultures. Or, so I'd like to think.

As I hit enter on my keyboard and my printer begins to hum and rumble electronically, warming up to print out two copies of the invoice I've made for the shipment I'm working on, the door to my room lets me know that someone is outside by giving me two crisp, polite knocks. I sense my visitor well before she performs those knocks; by this point, as my two house guests have been staying with me for the past two days, I now have a solid grasp over their respective signatures and can tell them apart from one another - and this time, my visitor is Saber Lily.

"Yes, come in," I call over, reaching down to grab my invoice copies. Other than the big fax/scanner/printer all-in-one machine that I've got that I use for primarily copying and faxing purposes, I also have a smaller, black and white inkjet that does nothing _but_ print, and it's quite fast and efficient at it too, compared to the relative monster of a machine that the all-in-one is, and I have it sitting underneath my desk to save space up top. The door opens shyly, and in peeks Saber Lily, whom I turn around in my chair to greet once I place the invoices on my desk, on top of the manila folder that contains the paperwork for this particular piece of work of mine. "Good morning, is there anything I can do for you?"

"Ah..." Lily smiles with a healthy mixture of shyness and nervousness as she slips into my room, closing the door behind me for courtesy's sake. "I - I would like to ask - er, yes, ask if, um...there is anything you would like me to do..."

I tilt my head a little to the side, making it clear that I'm a little bit puzzled over this kind of request. "Have anything for you to do..." I repeat after her. "As in...?"

"Well..you see, Lady Matthew explained to me the situation..." Lily gestures a little. What's also clear is the fact that she's not totally acclimated to the environment here, given her nervousness when talking to me. I like to think of myself as someone who's easy to approach and talk to, and I've made all the efforts I can to convey that image. "...so I wish to know if there is no assignment you would like me to undertake. Uh, for example...patrolling, or...guarding, or...?"

Crossing my arms and leaning back a little in my chair, I ponder a little.

"I don't _particularly_ need you to be out patrolling..." I tell her slowly. "Because if anything, I'd rather have everyone stick together."

"Wh-Why's that, Master?"

"Because that way, when the singularity appears, we can attack as a cohesive unit. I'd rather not risk the chance of sending you and Matthew out to patrol random areas and then have the singularity appear right on top of you. That won't be good at all."

"It's alright, Master. This Artoria Pendragon shall not fall to the likes of petty foes! I may not look it, and I may have introduced myself to you as a knight and a king in training, but I am confident in my abilities to fight!" Lily announces quite proudly, certainly having the air of a confident teenager who's eager to show off what she can do to back up her words. The confidence is quite refreshing, frankly, and I appreciate it dearly.

"I'm sure that you are, but I'd still like to stick to my plan of waiting until the singularity hits so that we can react appropriately."

"Huh...well...if you say so, Master..." Lily sounds quite disheartened and let down, and her facial expression morphs in accordance with the heaviness of her words. "But...I must ask, how will you know when the singularity will appear, Master?"

"Well...you see, I'm what they call a Resident Guardian," I explain, leaning a bit forward in my chair. "Are you familiar with the term?"

Lily shakes her head slowly, so I clear my throat a little.

"Okay. Basically, a Resident Guardian is a mage like me who's settled into a particular region as a permanent resident, with no plans on moving out of that region for the majority of his or her life; that mage is then responsible for handling all magic-related incidents in his or her respective regions, making sure that magic isn't leaked to the general public, correcting magical flaws and inconsistencies, so on and so forth. This isn't a regulated system at all, though - it's very hard for organized magic associations like the Mages' Association to enforce any kind of system for this due to the independence and general lack of cooperation from Resident Mages like myself, and not to mention there are thousands of them spread out around the world. And, of course, there are entire regions around the world that aren't being overseen by Resident Guardians to begin with, so those areas typically become free-for-all stages for anything magic-related. The term can also apply to magic families who've historically lived in a certain area or to magic individuals or families who own their own pieces of land and/or property, so it only makes sense for them to be Resident Guardians by default. In my case, I preside over a couple of towns: this one, called Tierra del Illamas, and the surrounding towns of Nelson, Archibrod, and Watson Estates. The big city up north, Los Angeles, is also _technically_ under my supervision, but that's such a huge city and region that several other Resident Guardians have staked claims there too and are messing around there."

Lily looks concerned. "Are you not worried about those other Resident Guardians who are intruding on your turf? I think Merlin told me before that generally speaking, mages do not like it when others trespass on their designated lands..."

I smile a little, shrugging nonchalantly. "Not really, they don't worry me at all. I don't have a reason to go after them, so long as they don't do anything that I personally object to; besides, they don't even know that I'm the Resident Guardian of this region anyway."

"Eh? They don't?" Lily seems surprised. "Er...well, is there a...a reason for this, um...anonymity, Master?"

"I like not being known. I find it a lot more convenient to be incognito, undercover. I can go places and do things without having to worry about getting recognized." I gaze at Lily for a moment, pausing. "I guess for someone like yourself, it's a little bit difficult to understand that, maybe. But I'd like to assure you that I'm quite knowledgeable in this field."

Lily nods slowly. "If Master decrees it..." she says quietly.

"By the way, you called yourself 'Artoria'," I mention. "But on the Summoning Ticket that had your Heroic Spirit within it, it said that your name was 'Altria'. Is there a name that you prefer? Other than me calling you Lily, of course."

Blinking with even more puzzlement, Lily stares at me briefly.

"A- _Altria...?"_ she balks somewhat. "Er...I...I've never heard of my name being pronounced that way..."

I rub my chin. "Interesting. Then I'll assume Artoria is the proper pronunciation?"

"That was my name in my life, yes. M-Maybe...maybe modern translations from the records of my life have assigned my name to be spelt and pronounced in that way?"

"Hm, maybe, I can definitely see that happening."

"But...um..." Lily begins to fidget a little, pressing her index fingertips together as she squirms lightly in place. "L...'Lily'...is perfectly fine..."

I smile. How cute.

"You've taken a liking to it?" I ask, causing the floodgates in Lily's cheeks trying desperately to hold back the blood in her face to finally break, and she averts her gaze completely to the carpeted floor as she nods a tiny nod. "That's good, I'm glad you like it. But in case you'd like me to call you something else instead, since, y'know, you're in your whole knight training process, then feel free to let me know anytime."

Saber Lily nods, trying hard to push aside her sense of embarrassment, but I get the sense that if I turn her away now to finish up my work, she'll leave unsatisfied. And _wow_ , that sounds lewd as hell.

"If you'd like to train, I can make time for you this evening," I tell her. "Actually, tell you what: today's a Friday, which means my work here'll end pretty early, and after that, I'd like to take you around the local area here, specifically the shopping mall and the supermarket that's nearby. So for that, would you like to eat lunch outside, or have lunch at home here?"

"E-Ehh..." Lily frets a little, tempted very much by both of her choices. "Um...w-will the food outside be as good as yours, Master?"

I snort immediately in response to Lily's innocent question.

"You must really like my cooking, huh," I chortle just a bit, causing Lily to blush even harder.

"P-Please, Master, it's - it was very embarrassing for me to say that out loud...!" Lily mumbles, her voice strained and muffled, an obvious sign that Lily wants to raise her voice but can't, because she feels that she'll start being rude.

"I mean, I have no problem cooking lunch for us today again," I shrug. "But it's not like I'm the only one in the world who can make good food. Restaurants and other food places outside have perfectly good meals too that you can try. As a matter of fact, there's one particular place I'd like to show you, and I think you'll love it."

"Really?" Lily sure gets swayed easily by the prospect of food. "Th-Then, if Master personally recommends it, I would love to try!"

"Then wait for me to get this last piece of work done, and we'll get a move on. Oh, and tell Matthew too, since we'll be going together."

"Yes, right away, Master!"

And with that, Lily scampers out of my room to go tell Matthew the plans for today, and I turn around in my chair to finish up these last few shipments.

I've both heard and read, during my time at Chaldea, that the dispositions of Servants can fluctuate hard on the personality spectrum. Cold, calm, reserved, and calculating to personalities that can only be described as batshit insane. I suppose having Saber Lily, who's a perfectly reasonable and unfailingly good-natured Servant, in this retrospect, is a total godsend. Because even if I don't look it or act like it, I can be a serious Debbie Downer sometimes...letting pessimistic thoughts run through my head and becoming all dark and brooding and edgy. I thought that perhaps growing up a little would help me grow out of it, but there come times when I definitely have my moments, and sometimes I have to wonder if growing up alone's shaped me out to be like that. Well...then again, there really can't be anything else that would explain it, can there.

And, now that I think about it, depending on how long this singularity lasts, I may have to expect to spend an extended period of time with these girls and whichever Servants follow. That would essentially mean that I'll start actually living with people, something I haven't done in...I want to say three years, ever since my foster father's death. I'm not sure what to feel about it. Does that mean that I can start calling them family? What even _is_ my definition of a family? Because of all the people on this planet, I am the least qualified to tell anyone, much less myself, what a "family" is. Of course, it would be really easy for me to go ahead and say that I've got a new family living with me now. But that's only if the word, the concept of "family" allows for a unit that only includes friends and comrades, rather than blood-related individuals. I'm not sure if that really applies, at least not in the magic world - I'm aware of the recent trends of English colloquialism these days, where the young'uns are starting to call their friends "fam" and stuff like that.

As I scan the invoices and send them via email attachments to their respective clients, I close out of my browsers and applications and shut down my work computer, getting out of my chair to put on some clothes to head outside. I suppose I'll figure out for myself if what I've got now in my hands is something I feel worthy enough to call a family. Even now, as I exit my room and head down the stairs to meet with Matthew and Lily, I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to being able to call them family. It's a little scary, honestly.

Because what if I lose them, just like I lost everyone else?

Even after all these years, that still is a nightmarishly hard question for me to answer.

* * *

"Here we are."

I pull the Mercedes into a space in the parking lot outside the Vons supermarket that I frequently come by to buy groceries. It's either this supermarket or another one down in Nelson, a Korean supermarket that sells Korean food products that I like to stock my fridge with, since, y'know, I'm part Korean and all that. This Vons easily takes care of everything else, though. In the meantime, once I shut off the engine of my car, we climb out, everyone in their casual clothes and all, as we're in public. I _am_ definitely worried about Lily's clothing - even though she's been getting around just fine in that dress and getup, now we're entering the realm of the youthful public, as I like to call it - where young teens with raging hormones are out and about like zombies that walk during the day. It doesn't help that there's a high school that's right around the corner from here, and that now is about the time for kids who don't have a sixth period to be walking out of class and dispersing into the small mall complex here to grab food or just hang out after school.

I'd definitely know, because I graduated from that same school.

"Master? Is there something...?" Lily asks hesitantly, and I find myself staring at Lily on accident while absorbed in my own thoughts.

"Shit, sorry, no, there's - " but I cut myself off - her clothes _definitely_ concern me. "Actually, after we eat lunch, I'd like to buy some clothes for you."

"Huh? C-Clothes...?" Lily shyly glances down at herself, immediately and correctly sensing that I'm taking fault with her current outfit. "...is this choice of attire...considered inappropriate for modern-day public outing?"

"Not _inappropriate,_ but..." I scratch my head a little. "It's definitely not _common_ for people to wear a one-piece dress, black thighhighs, and a ribbon on the back of your head. And besides that, I need to warn you that, since there's a high school nearby with a lot of teenagers, you're gonna get a _whole_ lotta stares from the boys if they start showing up. They _should_ be getting out of class by now..."

"Boys..." Lily's shy smile falters somewhat.

"Not good around them, huh," I take a quick guess.

"Erm...well...it's...it's just that...I prefer to...make company with other girls and women," Lily murmurs.

"Oh, I see. But you can talk to me just fine, though?"

"Th-That's because you are my Master! And...well...I cannot bring myself to be rude to you, especially...especially not after cooking for me...and Lady Matthew..."

At this, I let out a brief and cheery chuckle. "So it's true what they say, the quickest way to everyone's hearts is through their stomachs," I joke around, and Lily fidgets even harder. "Well, enough with that, let's head inside, I'm sure you two're pretty hungry."

"How about you, Senpai? Aren't you hungry too?" Matthew asks as we cross the small street that divides the supermarket from the parking lot next to it.

"A little bit."

We head inside, into the sliding automatic doors. At the sight of an automatic door, Lily flinches slightly in surprise, walking quickly through while looking back at it in marvel. But once we're inside and Lily gets over the whole sliding automatic door thing, she takes one look around and gasps.

"Th-This is a s-supermarket...?" Lily exclaims almost hoarsely, trying to keep her voice down, and she can't help but step briskly towards the nearest fruit stand that carries oranges, tangerines, apples, and bananas, so Matthew and I follow after her.

"I thought Servants were supposed to be summoned with a general knowledge about the era into which they've been summoned?" I murmur quietly out of the corner of my lips to Matthew.

"Well...yes, but I think it's because of Miss Lily's overall innocent and explorative nature," she says back. "Remember that she's called herself a knight in training."

"She just _looks_ really young. I was mentioning high school kids and all that, but she looks like she's gotta be that age, right?"

"I think so too...perhaps seventeen, eighteen?" Matthew takes a look up at me. "Um...I don't mean to be rude, Senpai, but...how old are you?"

"Twenty-two."

Blinking at me, Matthew takes a step back in surprise.

"What?" I ask casually, raising an eyebrow over at her.

"T-Twenty-two...? But...but you look so much younger than that..." Matthew stutters, looking me down from head to toe.

"What, did you think I was in high school?" I grin with just a smidge of sarcasm.

"Erm...well, I _did_ think that you at least _graduated_ high school...seeing that it's obvious you are working and all..."

"Excellent deductive skills, Watson. Now let's go grab Lily before she takes three hours to tour the whole supermarket..."

We head over to Lily, who's just standing in front of the watermelon counter and staring at all the ripe and succulent watermelons sitting out on display for purchase.

"Hey, Lily, let's go have lunch," I call out to her, stepping near her, and she jolts a little, like I'm snapping her out of a daze or something.

"Ah! Y-Yes, of course..." Lily quickly turns to me, like she's trying to act innocent from her captivation by a fruit stand. "S-Supermarkets are...very amazing, yes!"

"They are. It's one of the many reasons why people like me can afford to sit around home all day doing just one job, rather than having to make and grow food for myself," I remark as we swing around over to the small Panda Express restaurant that's situated inside the supermarket; rather than a full-blown restaurant like the one that Matthew and I went to, this one is set up somewhat like a bar, with people lining up right outside the counter to be served. "Here it is. Matthew's already been by here last time - I hope you don't mind having this again?"

"No, it was very good the last time," Matthew shakes her head with a smile, and before we know it, Lily's already staring deeply into the food that sits behind the glass counter.

"Hello, welcome to Panda, would you like to try a sample?" the employee behind the counter greets us as usual, and I step forward to handle the situation, since Lily is unfamiliar with it, I'd imagine.

"Yes, uh, could you let her try the orange chicken?" I ask, and the employee sticks a toothpick in a piece of orange chicken and hands it to me, and I give it to Lily. "Here, it's a sample. Try it."

Lily slowly closes her lips over the piece of orange chicken, and sure enough, her eyes brighten up, and she starts cradling her right cheek with her hand and closes her eyes as she chews to savor the tasty chicken. And sure enough, as I feared, lily flowers begin to spring up around the floor on which she's standing.

"Lily, uh, your flowers, your flowers..." I remind her hastily, and Lily snaps out of her foodgasm trance too, hurriedly looking around at the floor at her feet, hastily stooping down to gather the flowers up while I turn to the employee and put in our orders for everyone. Once we get our food in plastic bags, I give the girls their own orders and take them over to a designated rest area, where there are tables and chairs and couches, even, for public use for the supermarket customers.

"Mmmnn..." Lily remarks while chewing, swallowing her mouthful of food first before resuming. "Food in this day and age...from homemade to restaurant-made, I'm so glad that I was summoned into this era..."

"You really love food, huh," I make an obvious remark, as if I couldn't tell that food is one of Lily's passions.

"Yes! It always has been," she smiles brightly back, but when I look back up at her from my food, her smile's faded somewhat. "Because...during my travels with Kay and Merlin, I...good food was not always easy to find. And sometimes, even when we did have food, it was not always the best. Merlin always made sure that our needs were provided for in the end, but...admittedly, when it came to things like food, the quality that he found was...not always the greatest..."

"Sounds tough."

"A-Ah, but - but I like to think of that as part of my training to become King," Lily says quickly. "I think there's a saying in this era, 'what does not kill you makes you stronger'...?"

I smile at Lily.

"Well, now that you're with us, you don't need to worry about starvation as a tool of building character," I assure her.

As we eat, I sense people coming into the supermarket. This public rest area, which isn't that big to begin with, happens to sit right next to the two entrances into the supermarket, so it's very easy for me to pick up on people coming in and out, at least through this entrance. And sure enough, several groups of high school boys and girls, spaced out about a minute from each other, start heading inside, most likely to pick up their own lunches. Lily happens to be sitting on the side of our table that causes her to face the entrance, meaning that when those boys walk in, if they happen to glance to their right, they'll be able to feast their eyes on Lily.

And oh boy, do they do just that. One of the boys happens to glance right, and the first person he sees, I can tell, is Lily, and that's all it takes for the chain reaction to be set off.

"...Master?" Lily mumbles towards me, her plate about two-thirds eaten.

"...yeah, I know," I grumble back. Looking up from my own food discretely, I can easily see quite a number of kids looking our way, specifically at Lily. "You can feel them starin' at you?"

Lily nods uncomfortably.

"Yeah, sorry about that. That's why I mentioned that I wanted to get you some new clothes..."

"Ah, I see..."

"It also doesn't help that both of you are extremely attractive, according to modern standards..." I sigh a little bit. "You two're probably the best-lookin' girls these kids've seen in person all their lives."

"I-Is that so..." Matthew sounds more unsure than flattered. "I always thought that I was quite average..."

"Now that's just selling yourself short."

We finish up our food, tossing our garbage away in a nearby trash can. By that point, the boys have moved on, but now that school's out for the weekend for those who don't have sixth periods or beyond, I know that we'll encounter many more instances like this. But for now, I take the two of them over to the nearby clothing store, a TJ Max's, so that we can pick out a few clothes for Lily to wear for starters. I entrust the clothing picking to Matthew, since it'd be a little awkward for a guy like me to be helping a girl pick out clothes, so in the meantime, while those two are browsing through clothes to see what Lily likes, I stand by in the aisle, checking my email through the phone for anything work-related that might've come in after I've gotten off work. A few emails regarding shipment information coming in from Xiamen, Ningbo, and Shanghai...but it's a chain email, and they aren't addressed to me specifically, so I don't have to respond to them.

After closing my email application, I hold my right hand over the screen of my phone and hold it there. A small blue rune appears briefly over it, and the screen warps to show me a top-down map of Tierra del Illamas and the adjacent towns of which I'm the Resident Guardian, as I've explained earlier to Lily in the morning. The map shows me about half a dozen locations that are denoted by green, yellow, or red runes situated over specific areas in the towns; most of them are green, but there's a yellow one down in Nelson, near one of the major intersections that sits right in the middle of the town. That means it's time for a little bit of tuning, so I make a mental note to myself to head down there sometime at night to tune that rune. I'm usually on top of making sure that my surveillance runes are in tip-top condition, but it's even more important, now that we're expecting an S-Class singularity to get dropped right on top of us at any moment.

I exit out of my magical map, but before I can click the power button to turn off the screen and pocket the phone, my phone buzzes with vibration, indicating that I've gotten some kind of text message or email, and the icon on the top of the screen shows that I've gotten an email just now, so I bite and check it, pulling my email app back up. It's an email from Dr. Archaman - and when he sends emails, it's always something important. So I open it up and read it.

_We've received notification from Mash that you need more saint quartz for another summoning, and we've sent them by international priority mail. Look for it to arrive within a day. -Roman_

I guess Matthew pulled through in the end, after all. But then again, that begs the question - did Dr. Archaman send that by nabbing them from Da Vinci, or did he legitimately convince Olga to cough up more? I guess I'll have something to ask him once I pay another visit to Chaldea.


	8. How to Spoil a King

**Chapter 8: How To Spoil a King**

* * *

"Ta-da! Senpai, please take a look!"

I turn around, having accompanied the two girls over to the changing room and waited for Lily to get changed while watching a streamer play some Player Unknown's Battlegrounds, and hearing Matthew announce their exit, I quickly turn off my Twitch application and pocket the phone again to pay attention.

"L-Lady Matthew, please, you - you don't have to..."

Lily is standing outside the changing room dressed now in a pale blue and white plaid sleeveless dress, with a yellow hoodie jacket that's about a size or two bigger than it probably should be. She still has on the black ribbon that's holding up her hair, though.

The moment she notices my eyes run up and down her body, Lily becomes terribly self-conscious and lowers her gaze all the way down to her feet, making sure that her bangs will hide her face and eyes.

"Pretty good," I nod, "but Lily's the type 'a girl who'd look good in just about anything, really."

"Which was why it was hard for me to pick out clothes for her," Matthew explains. "Ultimately, though, I do think this is the best we could do here. Admittedly this store didn't seem to have the widest selection of clothes available..."

"Yeah, it's just a small clothing store, after all. We can take a visit down to another mall down in Nelson, that place's pretty huge. Maybe next weekend or somethin'."

"Um, Senpai, you don't mind if I picked out another outfit for her?" Matthew asks, raising up another small pile of neatly folded clothes. "These are for everyday wear around the house, or another set of casual clothes."

"That's fine, Lily can choose her own outfit that way. Is that all you'll be getting?"

"Um...unless Miss Lily wants to buy more clothes..."

"N-No, I - I'm very happy with all of this," Lily speaks up quickly. "Clothes must be...very expensive, yes? I really don't think that it is right for my Master to invest so much into...into peripheral equipment like this..."

"Well, I _do_ think that it's important for you to have extra clothes so that if you'd like, you can go out in public anytime you want," I reason. "So it's not just peripheral, I'd say it's pretty important."

Hearing this, Lily starts to fidget a little uncomfortably again.

"...you are really far too kind, Master. Food I can understand, but...even things such as clothes...you are willing to buy for me..." She actually starts looking disheartened. "I'm just an...a knight in training. Am I really worth this kind of money, I wonder..."

I give Lily a bit of a shrug. "Well...of course you are," I say easily. "You're my Servant, right? I'd like to think that Masters are obligated to look after their Servants? Or am I wrong about that?"

"Well, there _are_ Servants who tend to act independently of their Masters, based on their abilities or, more than likely, simply based on their personalities," Matthew specifies. "And while some Servants are powerful enough and charismatic enough to command leverage in their relationships with their Masters, usually it is the Master who dictates the pace of the relationship they wish to have with their Servants."

"Oh, okay. Then I guess it's a good opportunity to tell you two that I'm the type 'a guy who feels obligated to take care of people livin' in the same house as me. I think it's just common courtesy for the owner of the house to take care of his guests," I say succinctly before holding my chin, thinking. "Wait, I think I've said that before..."

"But I have not yet proved myself worthy!" Lily asserts, putting her hand on her chest rather passionately. "P-Perhaps...perhaps basic living quarters and daily sustenance is acceptable, but...to be...to be treated so generously like this, even before we have engaged in our first battle together..." Lily resumes her uncertain, somewhat melancholic demeanor. "...I don't think this is how I can become a good King..."

I smile down at Lily. It goes without saying, but Lily really is a sweet girl.

"Well, I'm not too concerned with your whole tryin' to become a good king, personally, so I do apologize if you think that I'm spoiling and pampering you," I tell Lily. "But as your Master, I do insist that I be able to take care of whatever needs I think you have, even if it does mean that I am treating you with what you believe is unwarranted generosity. You could even call it a bad habit of mine."

"A bad habit? Of spoiling people?" Matthew giggles a little.

"I personally don't think there's anything particularly wrong with treating people you like well."

"But now, if you're starting to say that, I think I'm also starting to agree with Miss Lily," Matthew says in Lily's defense now. "We've only known each other for two days, yet you're treating us like we've known each other all our lives, or at least a very long period of time."

"What, so you're saying that I should be actin' more suspicious of you two?"

"Well, not _suspicious,_ but...generally speaking, most people who've only known each other for days wouldn't go buying clothes for each other." Matthew leans in towards me suddenly and swiftly. "Unless...Senpai, do you _like_ Miss Lily?"

"I do," I nod firmly, not even batting an eyelash and responding with the _quickness._ "I think she's very cute, and she deserves all the pampering. But since she says that she's trying to train to become a strong knight, I'll have to hold myself back."

"Oh..." Somehow, Matthew sounds a little disappointed as she pulls away. "You just think she's cute, not as in, you _like_ her."

"Falling in love with someone I just met two days ago is a little bit tough, even for me," I admit, glancing down at Lily, who's hiding her face in her hands. "What's wrong, Lily?"

"N-Nothing, M...Master..." she mumbles through her hands. "I just...I'm not sure how I feel about...being called cute..."

"Ah, sorry, my bad. As an apology, let's go get ice cream - there's an ice cream shop right across this street outside," I compromise.

"You're spoiling her _still_ , Senpai," Matthew pouts a little while giving Lily a calm-down hug.

"But it's _food_ , according to her, it's not _spoiling_ because I'm getting her something to eat."

"But ice cream isn't like, _essential_ food...!"

I just give Matthew a bemused thumbs-up before turning and leading the girls to the cashier to buy Lily's new clothes. Once the purchases are made, I lead Matthew and Lily across the street, like I promised, over to a Baskin Robin's shop literally on the next corner over.

"Do you know of ice cream, Lily?" I ask her, holding the bags that contain the rest of Lily's casual clothes as we stand in front of the counter.

"Ice...cream...?" Lily asks, looking into the counter through the glass, down at the colorful flavors of ice cream sitting in their buckets. "Is this...'ice cream'...?"

"Yep. It's a dessert kind of food, very sweet and cold. You should try some."

"Oh...okay..."

The employee standing behind the counter waiting to serve us smiles my way, nodding her head.

"She from England?" she asks politely, and I nod back.

"I think we'll be awhile," I tell her, and she nods back too.

"No problem, take your time."

So I guide Lily through the flavors briefly, and eventually she settles on my recommendation, cookies and cream and coffee ice cream in a cup. I buy a double scoop of vanilla and orange sherbet for Matthew, and for myself, I get a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of rainbow sherbet in a cup, two distinct flavors that I can alternate between to keep either taste fresh. Once all the ice cream is bought, we pile outside the Baskin Robins, and Lily, having taken a small bite of her cookies and cream ice cream, gasps softly and shudders giddily.

"Th-This 'ice cream' is...is...is amazing...!" Lily cries softly, wanting to exclaim with excitement but not wanting to make a commotion. "Oh, my word - the foods of this modern era...if only we had foods like this in my own time...such a rich texture and flavor..."

Turning to me swiftly, Lily smiles her biggest smile yet up at me.

"Master, um...I know that...just earlier, I may have objected to accepting your generosity when it came to things like clothes..." she says shyly, "but...if it is alright with you, if it is anything food-related, I will always be ready to accept your generosity."

"You just really like food, huh."

"Ehehehe..."

As we enjoy our ice cream and go window-shopping for a bit, exploring more of the strip mall around the area, I walk more closely to Matthew and hold up my phone to her, showing her the email I got from Dr. Archaman.

"Looks like they received your request for more quartz," I inform my underclassman, even though she's not my underclassman at all. "It should be getting here by tomorrow via international priority mail."

"That's great news! You can summon one more time, hopefully before the singularity begins," Matthew's face brightens up, nodding emphatically with the good news.

"You think Dr. Archaman pulled the quartz outta his own pocket to send to us? Or do you think Olga was the one who sent it?"

"Seeing how quickly we received a response, and due to the fact that Dr. Archaman was the one who responded, I would say that he is the one supplying us with this new set of quartz."

"Yeah, I figured."

"How did you figure it, Senpai?"

"Because if I remember what Olga'd do in a situation like this correctly, she'd either just forget about it completely after getting your notice and dump it in the trash somewhere, or if we're lucky, she'd actually give a rat's ass about and send us maybe a handful of extra quarts, but definitely not another whole batch like the one Dr. Archaman's promising."

Matthew can only offer a small smile back at me as we continue to walk through the strip mall.

"Other than that, how are you likin' it so far here?" I ask Matthew. "I know it might be a bit too early to be surveying you about your thoughts on this town, but I do care about what you think."

"Well, it just...goes without saying that...I really am enjoying my time here," Matthew smiles quite beautifully. "You're making me forget that this is supposed to be my job. I'm even starting to feel like I shouldn't...I shouldn't necessarily be getting paid for this. Not that...I was being paid much to begin with."

I chortle sarcastically. "Yeah...I've seen those figures on the Chaldean payroll. It ain't much...so you can think 'a this as a temporary pay raise."

Matthew giggles along with me a little awkwardly. "Pay raise, you say?"

"Yeah. Either that, or a temporary period of having a ton of job benefits. Free food, a free chef, nice weather..." My expression darkens a little bit. "...at least, all that until shit hits the fan when the singularity shows up."

"Yes...that's what I'm also...a little bit scared of," Matthew nods slowly. "Because of the scale of the projected singularity, it is very likely that much of the towns affected will be destroyed. Normally I can perform some form of reconstructive process to restore the singularity area to how it was before, but...an S-Class's prsence is...too strong to be reversed..."

Matthew trails off briefly before picking herself back up.

"This town is very nice, Senpai. And with how well you've been treating us, I feel that much more motivated to do my best to ensure that nothing befalls this place, as it is your town of residence, after all. I'm just...not sure if I'm strong enough to be able to stop it from wreaking its havoc. I'm not sure if all of us together will be strong enough to do that."

"We'll see."

I can sense Matthew glancing up at me. "Even the toughest of mages can have trouble with the power that S-Class singularities produce," she tells me. "I know that you do have experience dealing with singularities from before, according to Miss Olga, but..."

"I _have_ made preparations for it, but like I said, we'll see just how strong it is, and how well I can figure out how to deal with it," I repeat. "It'd be best if this singularity was the pseudo-reality marble type, where it replaces this current world with an artificial one that it creates by surfacing. That way, the current world would still be intact, provided that we defuse the singularity in time before its artificial world starts replacing the reality of this one."

"But if it is like that, then it would be significantly more powerful..." Matthew worries.

"Maybe so, but that's a risk I'm willing to take."

"I'm...not so sure..."

We pass by the Petco, where Lily catches wind of the rabbit display that the store's got going on as a limited time sale and starts going _squee!_ over them, almost expectedly, so we head inside the Petco to let Lily examine the cute bunnies. I even ask one of the Petco employees if it's alright for Lily to hold one, and to my enormous surprise, they were kind enough to let her do just that, so Lily almost passes out from cuteness overload as the employee I ask for assistance gingerly picks up an adult rabbit who's used to being picked up and shown to visitors and sets it in Lily's arms, and Lily, trying her best to contain her massive hype so that she won't scare the bunny, cradles it and nuzzles it, even giving it a kiss here and there when the rabbit sniffs at her face to figure out the new customer.

While letting Matthew and Lily spend some time with their rabbit, I ponder the brief conversation I've just had with Matthew. All the singularities and magical incidents I've dealt with, I was able to restore the surrounding areas easily and without a problem. One of the reasons why I'm not particularly annoyed with Olga when I think I otherwise should be is the fact that this is a large-scale singularity, so it'll provide me with plenty of opportunities that smaller-scale incidents just can't physically offer. After all, it's just like an RPG: you can beat the crap out of all the easy enemies you want, but that's not what's going to help you level up faster or improve your skills. You need something that'll push you, something that'll compel you to get better. It's a few steps shy of outright Darwinism, where only the fittest survive, but it's something along that line - if there's no challenge, there's no room for improvement. And there's _always_ room for improvement. For humans, at least.

But what's starting to creep up in the back of my head is the exact, precise location of the singularity. I have yet to detect any semblance of a magic disturbance anywhere; the surveillance runes I've got set up throughout my territories haven't detected anything out of the ordinary, and it's not like I've been told to expect the singularity to show up in a particular spot, neither from Matthew and nor from Olga. I guess if I were to email Dr. Archaman or Da Vinci, maybe they'd know, but given that I don't know them very well, and they're already helping us out by sending us another batch of quartz, I'm not sure if it's within my jurisdiction to ask of them yet another favor. That's why I told Lily earlier today that it's better for us to stick together and have the singularity happen on its own so that we can react to it and investigate it together; if, on the other hand, I had a general understanding of the possible location or locations where the singularity would first develop, I'd've been more open to Lily's suggestion of having her and Matthew go on patrol. But since the singularity could literally pop up anywhere in any of the four cities that I'm in charge of as Resident Guardian, there are just way too many places to assume that it could show up in, and by that point it'd be no different from trying to pick out the winning numbers in the California State Lottery, minus the money you'd get for winning, assuming you did actually win something that wasn't eaten up entirely by taxes.

After a while, Lily hands the bunny back to the employee, though she looks supremely reluctant to part with it. Even still, she toddles back over to me with Matthew in tow, still riding the cuteness high after holding that bunny.

"I-It would be a little much to ask for a pet bunny, right, Master?" Lily asks hopefully, and I shake my head with an awkward smile.

"I'm not sure if we can take care of a pet, let alone a rabbit..."

"Aw..." Lily hangs her head a little, but as bummed out as she is, she knows that buying a bunny would be an obligation that would burden us all.

"Oh, and Lily, when we're out and about, try not to call me 'Master', since that'll sound really weird to other people if they overhear us," I ask Lily. "Just call me August."

"E-Eh...is...is that alright...?"

"Yeah, it's fine. I would actually prefer that we be on a first-name basis, but out in public, I'd have to enforce it, since...people might get the wrong idea about us if they keep hearing you following me around calling me 'Master'..."

Lily genuinely looks confused. "...but what is so wrong with that?" she asks with teeth-rottingly pure innocence.

* * *

Nightfall again. It's about ten hours since our lunchtime outing, and as promised, I'm standing on the grass field with Lily in her full battle gear, with Matthew also in her Demi-Servant form spectating the two of us.

"Don't overexert yourself," I call over to Lily. "Remember that we've still gotta head down to one of my runes so that I can tune it for maintenance; you never know if we might run into something along the way."

"Yes, Master!" Lily hollers over, gripping Caliburn tightly as she readies her stance to attack.

"Will you be alright, Senpai?" Matthew also hollers over off to my right.

"We aren't going all-out, if that's what you're asking, so yeah, I think I'll be okay!"

Lily then charges forward, her sword lifted up high over her head for a strike already, and watching her hands and her sword to gauge how strongly she's going to swing the blade, I stand my ground, raise my left arm up over my head, and concentrate on the point of contact that her sword will hit my arm so that when Lily's Caliburn strikes where I predict that it will, a blue rune ripples audibly in the air between her sword and my arm, and the repulsion effect of the rippling rune pushes back Lily's sword, taking her by surprise as she's forced to readjust her loosened grip on her weapon.

Even though I can easily riposte after this parry, I hold back, since this is only a spar, not an actual fight to the death, allowing Lily time to recover and strike again. Rather than a proper sword swing, she lunges in and attempts a quick hit with the bottom of her sword handle, but I sidestep and jam by left elbow into the side of Lily's armor; I do have to put more energy behind this elbow jab so that I can push Lily in all her armor away far enough to make me safe from her Caliburn's reach, but her armor will protect her from the actual physical blow of my elbow in the meantime. Lily immediately stomps down to halt herself and lunges back in, unrelenting and making sure to keep up the pressure, this time throwing out an uppercut swing from her sword at me, which I also dodge by leaping off to the side and rolling across my shoulders to break my fall and get up quickly.

"Yaaaa!"

Lily tracks my movement expertly and lunges at me again, this time with her sword already raised over her head for an overhead blow, and I'm forced to dodge again, leaping backwards this time and having to perform a handstand leap to get back onto my feet.

Then, Lily herself takes a huge leap straight up into the air, clearing what's got to be at least forty meters into the dark night sky that I've illuminated with runes that give the otherwise dark grass field a luminescent blue hue to attack me with a falling strike.

Rather than dodge, I decide to hold position instead and meet Caliburn straight-on - while praying that Lily doesn't accidentally cut me in half. Normally I wouldn't take the risk, but because I can safely presume that Lily isn't trying to actively kill her own Master, and because we're sparring for the sake of honing Lily's combat skills, I meet Caliburn with my right arm over my head, and a shield rune expands the moment Caliburn gets swung on top of me. Pain jolts through my right arm as my shield rune shakes and buzzes dangerously, Caliburn's golden aura clearly more than a match for my own puny human power.

Quickly pulling back Caliburn, Lily proceeds to bombard me with swings, rapidly laying them down one after another in an attempt to break through my defense, which I keep up with constant blocks and parries with my shield runes. Her soft green eyes that are normally quite demure and easy on the eyes, no pun intended, are intense and focused, with the intention of making the most out of this spar, and Caliburn continues its airborne assault, smashing against my spontaneously created shield runes that spark with golden shards of magic aura that fly all around me. The constant attacking will eventually wear me down and open me up to a hit, so I counterattack, repulsing a particularly strong sword swing from Lily to cause her to stumble back a little from the counter-force, and I take advantage by putting in a free front kick against her sturdy chest armor that accomplishes nothing aside from pushing her back a little to put some distance between the two of us.

"Sorry if this isn't enough to get you up to par," I call over at Lily, who lowers her sword when she hears me calling out to her. "I'm sure that if we had another sword user, you'd get a lot more out of this training. All I can really do is defend against your attacks."

But Lily shakes her head. "No, not at all, this is very good training!" she calls back enthusiastically. "You have very sharp reactions and can see the holes in my attacks, and you've punished me for several of them. I'm learning where to work on my offense, thanks to you, Master!"

I nod, glad that she's getting some use out of this.

"Then I'll try attacking you this time," I alert her. "Ready?"


	9. Master and Servant

**Chapter 9: Master and Servant**

* * *

I raise my hand up in the same gun-like motion as I'd done to Matthew the other night, swiftly snapping my aim at Lily. In response, Lily bends her knees a little, lowering her profile somewhat and assuming defensive stance with Caliburn.

But instead of firing off my Reigun at her, I raise my hand straight up into the air, like an umpire of a hundred-meter dash raising the start gun, and fire it like that.

I watch Lily's face contort in surprise as she quickly snaps her gaze up into the air, watching the colorless energy bullet soar high into the air before air-bursting itself into multiple vectors of smaller but faster energy bullets that then swerve hard back down to the earth, gunning straight for Lily. With her attention so adamantly fixed on the Reigun bullets I've fired off, it's almost pitifully easy to tell that Lily isn't paying attention to her front at all. And although I do feel a little bad doing this, Lily wants this to serve as her training, so I'd be doing her a disservice if I didn't help her train her defense and how to cover as many angles of attack as possible.

Lowering my own profile and hunching my back slightly, I quickly burst off the ground into a rapid sprint towards Lily. The distance between us isn't that far - one of the things that our old cross-country coach taught us back in high school was that the human body has, at any given point, enough energy stocked up to let you sprint for around an average of seven seconds. Not a jog, not a brisk run, but a full-on, all-out sprint. And Lily is definitely within a seven-second sprint. Lily starts to panic; seeing me rush at her like this while the energy bullets I've launched into the air to attack her from above at the same time is throwing her for a big ol' loop, and as I'm sprinting towards her, I keep my eyes focused on Lily to see how she's going to react to a situation like this where she might not be able to defend herself from all the attacks coming at her.

Lily chooses to dodge. It seems that she knows that it won't be a good idea for her to try to stand her ground against two completely different angles of attack at once, so her response is to reposition herself so that she can hopefully dodge the air bullets coming down on her and then deal with the threat that I myself present to her. So as a result, Lily bursts off the ground herself and skids hard against the grass, timing her escape just before I can reach her to attack her with a running dash punch, and the energy bullets then crash into the ground, kicking up a few gusts of strong but brief winds that come out as a result of the nonlethal energy I've packed into them.

But I don't relent; the moment I see Lily dash away, I track her, swiftly kicking off the ground with my right foot to follow her location; a rune forms where I kick off the ground so that I can change the trajectory of my movement on a dime; this movement isn't normally possible with natural laws of physics with the kind of speed that I'd hit by sprinting at Lily, and Lily herself is even more shocked at the sight of me changing course so suddenly like this, and with her armor and her sword that surely must be quite heavy, even if she _is_ the future King of Britain, Lily stands her ground this time, raising her sword in another defensive stance to meet my attacks.

My right fist, emanating with a set of two small runes, one around my wrist and one in front of my knuckles, makes contact with Lily's blade that she turns to me, flat side towards me to cover the most amount of space before her as possible. The runes are there since I don't know what kind of magic is applied to Caliburn; as far as I know, this legendary sword could be capable of anything, and if King Arthur can be a girl in this universe, then what's stopping King Arthur's sword from being some kind of weapon of mass destruction? And so the runes will prevent my bare fist from physically making contact with the sword, but still allow the kinetic energy from my punch to transfer past into the sword.

But the moment my fist hits Caliburn, the sword flashes gold like the flash from a camera going off, and I can feel my fist get blown back violently, so much so that if it weren't for my forward running momentum, I most definitely would've gotten swept backwards off my feet. But I still keep my eyes on Lily, my opponent, and Lily is surprised at just how strong my punch was, given the fact that she's reeled hard from it and is only now recovering from the hit stun, whereas I'm already lunging at her, this time with a quick thrust of my right elbow, pulling my hand back over my left shoulder to then jam it against Lily's cheek. Had this been a real fight and not one for the sake of training, I would be aiming at one of her eyes instead.

Once again, Lily pulls her sword up to block, but this time, now that I'm familiar with the pushback defense mechanism on Caliburn, I brace for it as I collide my elbow against the flat surface of her sword a second time. The pushback hits me, but I lean forward significantly and push most of my weight forward to counteract it so that I stick as close to Lily as possible. However, Lily, too, is adapting to my offense, and now that she knows just how strong my physical attacks can be, she blocks it more adequately this time and stands her ground, keeping her eyes locked back onto me to watch for another possible follow-up attack.

The fact that I'm not relying on any heavy weapons to keep up my offensive pressure aids me greatly in keeping up said pressure, and even though Lily does recover much faster from my elbow strike, I recover even faster, and my left fist that I'm throwing forward to punch her in the chin forces her to maintain the defensive. Now that I know that Lily's quickly getting better at defending against my blows, I ramp up the speed of my punches, and just as she blocks my left chin punch, I start alternating, throwing rapid fisticuffs one after another with the other hand each time; every time my knuckles, protected by my runes, make contact with Caliburn, it sounds like a small firecracker going off during pre-Fourth of July celebrations. Eventually, the rate at which I'm throwing out punches at Lily overtakes the rate at which she's trying to learn how best to block my oncoming attacks, and it gets to the point where the force of my punches are starting to chisel Lily's grip on her sword, little by little. At this rate, I'm straight up going to punch Caliburn right out of her hands if she doesn't do something about my unrelenting offense soon.

And so she does: after one particularly strong punch that I aim for her right shoulder, just before I'm about to throw out another left hook punch, Lily quickly pulls Caliburn towards her chest, and the sword blade glows rapidly gold. I sense an alarming energy surge beginning to generate from within her, like a bomb with an unbelievably short fuse - the amount of energy her body's creating at this moment is unfathomable; at that amount, if Lily were to release that energy within a crowd of ordinary people, she could instantly kill that entire crowd if she wanted to, though given her personality, I'm sure she wouldn't want that. Still, I'm just an ordinary human myself - meaning that my next choice of action is very clear.

Just before she bursts her mana, I halt quickly mid-punch lunge and kick off the ground as hard as I can to send myself flying backwards, and just after I do, Lily lets out a powerful shout while gripping Caliburn by the handle with both hands, sword blade pointed straight up towards the heavens.

**"HA!"**

A violent invisible explosion of wind and air pummels the grass all around Lily in a perfect three-meter radius, and it blasts up dirt and grass from around her feet and sends it all flying in all directions about her. The shockwave of energy extends much further than that, and it hits me mid-jump and propels me much faster than I want to be traveling, causing me to skid off the bottom of my shoe and tumble backwards, and I grunt painfully as I feel the back of my head crash straight down against the grass before I tumble a few more times and slide back upright, though I do hold onto my cap that I'm wearing to make sure it doesn't fall off; even if I didn't hold onto it manually, I've got a rune that keeps both my cap and my glasses on my head and face for times just like this.

"Senpai, are you all right?!" Matthew hollers over, and I can hear her voice getting closer, a sign that she's in the middle of hurrying over to me to protect me if need be.

"I'm fine, don't worry," I call back over, but I still keep my eyes focused on Lily, who's now readying her stance again with Caliburn. "You doin' alright there, Lily?"

"Yes!" Lily says strongly, like she's been invigorated by that burst of mana she's just released, which isn't _normal_ , to say the least - committing to a controlled explosion of mana like that, especially mana of that kind of packed density, obviously drains a normal mana-wielding individual of much of their energy supply. But Lily seems completely fine, even after something like that. I suppose she _is_ the future King Arthur, after all. I just wonder where she's getting all that magic energy from, because something like that, I doubt many other Servants like her will have. Well, I could be wrong about that - Heroic Spirits are supposed to be very powerful, after all, but...we'll see. Assuming I get lucky enough to pull more Servants from that dumb FATE system or whatever, but that's a concern for a later time. "Master, if you are so kind as to grant me some additional time, I would like to continue this fight!"

"Whatever you'd like," I call back, and I raise my finger straight at Lily, simply pointing normally at her instead of pointing at her with a finger gun. "Let's go!"

I produce a rune that's about the same surface area as my dinner table - about four meters in diameter, and red hardpoints bubble in over a dozen locations within the rune before beginning to fire off horizontal lasers of energy towards Lily. Lily bursts off the ground on which she stands just as she sees me manufacture this attack rune, and once she's about halfway across the grass field towards me, I terminate the rune and kick off the ground into a sprint back towards her too to meet her in the middle of the field.

Lily meets me first with a powerful diagonal uppercut slash that I barely avoid by braking hard against the grass to stop myself from simply running straight into her attack and getting cut in half like a pair of scissors cutting through paper. Lily, moving much more quickly than any teenage girl like her is supposed to be able while wearing heavy armor and holding a sword that's bigger than her arms, snaps her wrists around on her sword handle to adjust her grip rapidly and immediately slashes back down at me, and when I lower my profile and raise my arm up to ward against the blow, Caliburn crashes down against my upraised arm and completely shatters the protective rune, but the failsafe blowback mechanism I've put into these protective runes thankfully causes Caliburn to burn its momentum and hang in the air for a moment, allowing me to backdash, gripping my forearm in pain, as the rune that just got destroyed I had tied to my forearm as its anchor point, meaning that with its destruction, the nerves inside my right forearm are the ones that take the brunt of the pain, and they're currently making my arm throb like a motherfucker.

Alarmed at the sight of me in actual pain, even though I didn't really make any noise that would signify that I'm injured, Lily immediately lowers her sword, looking scared at the possibility that she's ended up hurting me.

"M-Master! Did you - are you hurt?!" she cries out, but I shake my head as fast as I can.

"I'm good, you don't need to worry about me. You're not gonna tell the next person you fight if they're alright if you hit 'em, are you?"

"But - but I don't w - "

I interrupt Lily by pointing another finger gun at her, and she immediately assumes a defensive stance again right before I blast her point-blank with another Reigun shot. Lily narrows her eyes to the point of squinting, but she makes sure to keep them open so that she can see what I'm doing at all times. And after blasting her, I lunge at her, committing more mana into my protective runes so that they don't get shattered _as_ easily, though I don't know just how easily Caliburn will still be able to get rid of them. Lily raises her blade up defensively again, but this time, rather than a straightforward punch, I ball my fists together and slam down against Caliburn with a powerful hammerhead blow, and with a lot of power packed into this hit, I meet Lily's raised weapon with the bottoms of my combined palms.

To Lily's shock, my hammerhead strike blasts Caliburn straight down and slams it across her face, and she reels violently backwards, gripping at her face in more surprise than pain, but she tries her best to recover and deal with the pain so that she can keep tracking me. Normally I would take full advantage of Lily's vulnerability to tack on as much damage as I can, but again, this is only a training fight, so there's no point in whaling on her...even if it's really hard for a normal human like me to actually end up hurting a Heroic Spirit like Lily.

Once Lily's able to look around for herself, I get back on the move. Concentrating hard on my feet and ankles, I produce movement runes that allow me to push off the ground so hard that to the normal human eye, it looks like I've teleported - even though that's just an optical illusion, because in reality I'm not going _that_ fast, just fast enough for me to reposition myself quickly without letting my opponent have a chance to react to what I'm doing. Grinding against the grass hard on my foot, with another protective rune to help my right ankle brake so that I don't tear my entire ankle in half from the momentum, I throw another punch at Lily, this time aimed at her left shoulder, and even though Lily didn't see me move to her side, she somehow tracks me anyway and barely pulls Caliburn to her left in time to block my hit; the fact that I've purposely put less strength into my punch also means that she's able to recover quickly so that she can act against my next attack.

But I start mixing it up on her: rather than another punch, I put my right foot back to anchor myself down against the ground, then left up my left foot high up into the air to perform a sideways axe kick. If this were a real axe kick aimed to inflict damage, I'd aim my foot down against Lily's head, since she's actually short enough for my foot to reach at its height, but I don't bother and instead slam my foot down against the ground instead right in front of her, detonating the axe kick with my own infusion of mana. If Lily's mana burst from earlier was akin to a grenade explosion, then mine is nothing more than a water balloon splash, so imagine my surprise when I find Lily tripping over the small shockwave of energy that my axe kick produces against the grass field right at her feet. The only reason I can think of why Lily got tripped over something like that is because she didn't expect something like that to happen at all; after all, all the attacks I'd ever thrown at her were rune lasers and hard punches.

I back up again to let Lily get back up on her feet, and she does quickly, scrambling up, already a little red in the face in embarrassment at falling flat on the ground against her face, but seeing my own face that's still focused and not finding her little trip funny sobers her up fast. But when she waits for me to do something, I don't - I want her to attack me, since I've been attacking her for the most part for this fight. However, she doesn't get the memo, so for like a minute, we just stand there, staring at each other while spaced apart like a handful of meters, both assuming defensive stances. It's only when I tell her physically,

"Come at me,"

that she understands and swiftly lunges to swing Caliburn back at me.

Now that I've gotten a good feel for how strong Lily's swings are on average, combined with the magic power of Caliburn at this state, I tune my protection runes accordingly in preparation for Lily's next attack, and when it hits, aimed for my left side, I block it strongly with a stronger rune this time, one that's adequately adjusted to defend against Lily's attack. Of course, this means that I'm committing much more mana to my defense, which isn't usually my style, but for the sake of helping Lily make the most out of this little training session, I bear with it. After four or so sword swings against me, I start fighting back passively by countering her swings with stronger blocks, ones that involve me actively shoving back against her sword swings in retaliation, so in turn, Lily puts more and more power behind her swings.

We trade blows back and forth, back and forth. Sweat is dripping in visible streaks off my brow, and I can plainly see that Lily's scalp is popping with bits of sweat as well, even for a Heroic Spirit such as herself. I can feel the lactic acid building up steadily in my body, primarily in my arms but also some in my legs too, since I'm putting pressure on my legs to help me anchor myself against the ground so that Lily's Caliburn doesn't send me flying at any point from a single swing. After about a minute of nothing but trading attacks, our flurry of attacks on each other get to the point where we're practically throwing mana around: Lily's Caliburn is burning off gold aura with each sword swing as her control over her own energy begins to falter and loosen, but that doesn't stop her from keeping up the onslaught of heavy sword swings, and for my part, I'm finding myself breathing harder and harder while I can also feel my clothes starting to moisten and stick to my body from the sweat I'm generating all over. Maybe it would've been better if I'd've taken my jacket and hat off first. It's like a tennis match that Lily and I are engaged in: two tennis players hitting the ball back and forth with ferocious, tremendous power, with neither player missing a beat and unwilling to back down.

Our trades continue on for another minute; the longer the seconds drag on, the exponentially worse the lactic acid buildup in my muscles get, and my arms are screaming at me to get me to slow down or disengage so that I can let my body recover, but I refuse to listen and block yet another sharp sword jab that Lily aims for my chest, which I parry downwards at an angle towards the grass so that the tip doesn't accidentally pierce my stomach instead. I've been through this; I know what the feeling of fighting to the point where my body wants to collapse feels like.

Finally, Lily lets out a desperate yell, with sweat dripping off her own chin, pulls back Caliburn over her head, and it starts to glow gold strongly. I detect another ungodly surge of mana emitting from the sword - from both the sword _and_ Lily, actually - and knowing what this is about, I disengage _now_ , since I don't want to end up in ludicrous gibs all over the grass.

 **"Hyaaaaa!"** Lily shouts, and her voice sounds surprisingly guttural, coming all the way down from her diaphragm rather than just her throat.

And when she drops her sword down, Lily blasts off a wave of golden energy that ricochets fast towards me, firing off the blade of Caliburn with her downwards swing. Even though I've already backed the hell off from her, the blast travels so fast that I still have to react on a dime to get out of its way, and I do so by lunging my whole body to my right on instinct in a combat roll, pretty much like those combat rolls you see in action movies and stuff like that. As I roll back up to my feet, I hear a massive explosion rock the earth somewhere behind me, though I don't turn around to marvel at it, in case Lily gets the idea of throwing another one of those things out at me. God knows what'll happen if I get hit by one of _those_.

I take another glance at Lily's face to make eye contact with her, and she's readying Caliburn again, facing me as I kneel on the grass, letting my body recover while I have the chance before my body just breaks down in protest over me working it so hard. I notice that Lily's green eyes have a supernatural gold silhouette brimming around the outlines of her pupils, not unlike the white light that can be seen around the sun during a solar eclipse. That, and her whole body's silhouette itself is glowing gold slightly. That means that her body is nonstop generating immense quantities of mana, so much of it that her body doesn't know how to process it all and has to release it out of her body's orifices, mainly sweat pores, I'd imagine, so that her body doesn't accumulate a dangerous level of mana within itself to the point where Lily can't physically contain it all. Heroic Spirits sure are somethin' else, aren't they.

But just as Lily is about to kick off the ground again to attack, a third voice that we've apparently forgotten about calls out suddenly:

"Um, I-I think that's enough for tonight, don't you think...!?"

The two of us turn towards Matthew, and we find her standing on her toes, clearly very alarmed at the fight that the two of us were having. I suppose to a bystander, our little training session didn't seem like _just_ a training session.

"Yeah, let's call it there," I holler over to Lily, wiping my brow in the process. "We're here for the summoning, and I don't want us to wreck this place, so..."

"Ah!" Lily only now snaps out of her battle adrenaline when I mention blowing the park up, and she quickly eyes the smoldering crater that she's made with that sword blast that she's fired off with Caliburn. "I-I'm - I'm so sorry about that! I - I just...I just did that on instinct..."

"That's fine," I reassure her as she hurries up to me, carrying Caliburn that's since shed its golden aura by her side, meeting me at the smoldering crater that she's made with her sword mana strike. I toss my hand out over the crater and produce a rune that covers its surface area, and putting some mana into it, the rune glows and slowly begins reconstructing that portion of the field back to how it was before.

"...thank goodness you can do this, Master," Lily murmurs, watching me fix the damages that we've left behind in the wake of our training. "I'm sure...I'm sure that the locals here would definitely be very sad if they found their park damaged just because we wanted to train..."

"Don't worry about it - as long as it's within my territories that I'm established over as Resident Guardian, I can fix up anything. I just need the mana for it..."

"I can't believe you have so much mana, Senpai," Matthew tells me, having heard the tail end of the conversation between me and Lily as she, too, joins us in her Demi-Servant gear. "For you to fight that long and hard against someone like Miss Lily, that's unbelievable. You're not a normal mage, are you?"

"Given the fact that I'm honestly a little isolated from other mages in my area, I hesitate to call myself 'normal', if only on the basis that I don't know what a 'normal' mage would do," I reply curtly. "Why, do normal mages go around casting spells all day? I guess that's what they _would_ do, huh..."

"Er, actually, that's...more or less the truth. Most mages focus on their spellcraft and magecraft, but...you, Senpai, you specialize in combat magic," Matthew analyzes.

"I'm guessin' that that's pretty unusual for mages?" I ask, judging by her tone of voice.

"Yes. Especially when you consider that most Masters have their Servants to do much of the heavy close-quarters fighting for them while they simply support their servants from the rear lines," Matthew explains further.

"So...what if a Master has a Caster as a servant? What then? Who's gonna do the heavy lifting?"

"Uhhh..." Even Matthew doesn't seem so sure. "I-I think that in that case, if the Master himself or herself isn't a melee specialist, then the two of them would have to rely on indirect methods of offense - traps, lures, that kind of stuff. Unless their magecraft is strong enough to the point where they can engage against melee specialists head to head."

"Hm."

"But...Master, you - you were so much more talented at fighting than I thought you'd be," Lily professes earnestly and honestly, and while her words initially come off as potentially sarcastic and belittling, I know that Lily isn't trying to mean it that way. "I was really surprised at the fact that you chose to attack me directly. Like Lady Matthew said, I was under the impression that most mages would try to fight their enemies with their spells, but you fought me as if you were also a warrior. And, um...I really do appreciate that. I love having a good fight against other warriors like that. Having to fight against...ranged opponents who keep pushing me away with distanced attacks is a little..." Lily doesn't finish her thought and instead makes a difficult smile.

"It's just how I learned to fight," I say back, fixing up the last bit of damage in the field that we've caused. "Matthew, set up that FATE thing again so we can put in another summon."

"Yes, right away, Senpai," Matthew nods quickly, and she sets down her big cross-shield on the grass and prepares FATE while I finish up setting the grass back in place, from the place where Lily first let off her mana burst. Lily watches me anxiously as I finish my work.

"...Master, Lady Matthew has already voiced this concern, but...are you sure that you are alright?" she asks me softly, making sure that Matthew can't hear. "You really did spend a lot of mana...and all for the sake of helping me train...you didn't need to fight so hard."

I smile quickly back at her. "Like I said, it's fine. I wouldn't go that hard if I couldn't."

"Um...?" Lily isn't quite familiar with the modern mannerisms of colloquial English, so I reiterate to make it easier for her to understand.

"I wouldn't fight that hard if I didn't know that I could fight that hard, in other words. I know what my limits are."

Lily slowly nods, though I can tell easily that she doesn't really believe me.

We then stack up on Matthew, who's got FATE up and running again, and she hands me the thirty Saint Quartz sent to us by the courteous Dr. Archaman.

"I've heard that people having luck stats is a common joke in the magic world," I mutter to Matthew as I take the Quartz from her. "Heard that from when I visited Chaldea. That true?"

"I-It's just gossip, please don't pay attention to things like that," Matthew stammers quickly back.

"Oh, so it's like a meme."

"M-Meme...? Wha...what's that...?"

"Never mind."

And so I set the Quartz on the hologram platform, and I let the FATE thing do its thing.

"I don't think I'll ever get over the fact that summoning servants is based on randomness," I shake my head, much to Matthew's chagrin as the platform begins to glow with bright, light blue light.

Nine flashes and three more of those weird Craft Essence cards later, the platform gears up to give us our final pop.

"Well, I look forward to working with you two as our team for this singularity," I snort sarcastically to the two girls next to me, but just as I finish, Matthew gasps and points frantically at the FATE platform.

"Look, look, Senpai!" she cries out excitedly, and Lily is also inhaling rather dramatically with excitement too. "See that? When the platform turns gold, it means you're about to summon a servant!"

Indeed, she's right - the rings of the summoning light are pre-emptively turning gold, something we haven't seen before. The tall pillar of light blue light belches up from the center of the platform, and as it shimmers away, a shining silhouette of another individual is left standing on the FATE platform, slowly but surely materializing into view. And there, once the shining, obscuring light fades away, there stands a young woman standing gallantly on the platform, with her eyes closed as her blonde bangs and hair flutter down from the light and energy emitted from her summoning platform.

She wears a large royal blue dress with gold borders and linings; her chest and abdomen have cut-outs, clothed instead by another white dress that fits snugly underneath the big blue one; overall it gives her the image of wearing some kind of ballroom dress or something, though the poofy shoulders that the blue dress offers her do go a long way to helping accentuate that royal look about her. She's pretty much the same height as Lily; she's also got the same shade of blonde hair, though in a different hairstyle, specifically a bun compared to Lily's ponytail, though they seem to share the same _ahoge_.

Wait a minute.

Why do they look exactly the same?

Lifting up her hand,, she sets something invisible, shrouded by a mysterious aqua-blue spiraling wisp of mana or energy before her like a sword as she slowly opens her eyes and looks down at me from up on the slightly elevated platform of FATE. Hey look, she's got green eyes just like Lily's. And when she opens her mouth, the first thing she says is:

"I ask of you now: are you my Master?"


	10. Hiding the Real Talent

**Chapter 10: Hiding the Real Talent**

* * *

I glance down at the back of my hand, and then raise it while turning it towards this new Servant so that she can see. Now that I think about it, even her voice is the same as Lily's, just more mature-sounding, lower-pitched, and with the same British accent.

"I suppose I am," I say, albeit a little dryly, since I'm not sure if I'm supposed to considering myself lucky or not for pulling a Servant on the very last summon...whatever those individual summoning circles are called. I'll just call them rolls, since, well, this is starting to seem somewhat like a lottery roll, or like playing roulette...without even being able to see red or black.

With a curt nod, this new Servant steps down from the platform, which shimmers away out of sight the moment she's off it, and stands before me gallantly. As gallantly as a girl who's exactly Lily's height...and thus a little over a _full foot_ shorter than myself. Despite this, I leave human judgments and first impressions out of the way and take a step towards her, a hand raised in an anticipatory handshake, though I do have to wonder if this new Servant who looks exactly like Lily understands the modern concept of handshakes. To my quiet relief, though, she does, and she returns it immediately with her armored hand that's fitted with a gauntlet, just like Lily's, except hers is thicker and stronger, as I can easily tell just from the strength of her handshake.

"I'm Augustus Il," I introduce myself to her, "but just August is fine too. I'll be your Master for the time being, and you've been summoned to help us deal with an imminent singularity that we are expecting to have in this area very soon."

"The pleasure is mine, Master. For what service and duty lies ahead, my sword shall always be by your side," she returns, strongly and confidently. She's got quite a kingly air about her, though the only way I'd know what a "kingly air" would feel like is from what TV shows and movies I've watched, so I could, for all I know, be quite mistaken, since Hollywood tends to fuck up historical accuracy in favor of mass entertainment.

I notice that she then slowly turns her eyes to her right, over to Lily next to me. I also follow her gaze, and it's then that I realize that Lily, for very obvious reasons, is looking tremendously confused and stumped, and when the new Servant glances over at her, she takes a subconscious step back, stepping a little closer to me. Why she feels the need to lean towards me for protection is something I'm not sure I can answer, because it's obvious that she possesses way more raw mana and strength than a puny human like me does.

"So...I've noticed you two have the same face..." I say after clearing my throat politely. "Are you, uh, twins or something? 'Cause, like, I don't recall that King Arthur had a twin...unless there's something to the legend that I don't remember reading about...or..."

"Nay, Master. We are not twins," my new Servant clad in blue armor shakes her head, facing me again. "We are the same person. It appears that you have also somehow managed to summon forth my past self...when I had first pulled my first sword from the Stone."

Same person?

"Then you're also...King Arthur," I narrow my eyes at my new Servant.

"That is correct, Master. I am known as King Arthur, or the King of Knights." Arthur sets her invisible sword (I'm presuming that it is indeed a sword, given the fact that she mentioned a sword just before) into the grass, and it stands on its own, but she holds it against the bottom of the handle with her palm to her side. "But, as it has come to my attention that the name 'Arthur' is a name that is traditionally used in a male connotation, you may also call me 'Artoria' if you wish."

How considerate of a king to cover such nomenclature in a modern-day setting. Maybe it's that whole FATE configuration kicking in that ensures that summoned Servants are familiar with modern-day mannerisms and whatnot.

But now that Artoria's introduced herself as essentially the future version of Lily, I turn to Lily.

"Do you know that she's your future self?" I ask her, but to my surprise, she shakes her head.

"W-Well, I - I get the feeling that I _should_ know her..." Lily stammers, incredibly nervous at the fact that she's facing her future self. "But I...don't...think I do...but at the same time, she...she looks exactly like me, so..."

"Worry not, Princess Knight," Artoria declares softly, turning to her fully to give her the utmost attention. "I pose no danger to you. If it should suit you, you do not have to think of me as your future self, because the experiences that we possess are too different to make us the same person."

Not knowing what to say back, Lily shyly glances back at her future self, but she can't hold eye contact for long and she drops it almost immediately. So Artoria simply turns back to me instead.

"Master, please inform me of this singularity you have spoken of," Artoria requests.

"Basically, there's going to be some sort of reality marble that's supposed to appear anywhere in our local area, within, I'd say, about a hundred mile radius of this location," I point straight down at the ground. "Anywhere on land, that is. When it appears, we're tasked to discover the cause of the singularity and track down its origin point to defuse it and eliminate it."

"Understood. Then I take it that we must wait until this singularity reveals itself to us?"

"Yeah. Until it actually shows up, there's not much we can do about it at the moment."

"I see."

I turn then to Matthew to introduce her, since she's just kind of been standing here on my right awkwardly.

"This is Matthew Kyrielight. She's come here specifically from overseas to help us resolve the singularity, and she's actually a Demi-Servant, or a human fused with a Heroic Spirit."

"Uh - um, y-yes, it's - it's my honor to meet you, Miss - er, I mean, King Artoria!" Matthew stammers even harder than Lily does as she raises her trembling hands up at Artoria, who returns it. But the moment their hands connect, I notice Artoria's brows furrow hard, and the handshake itself lasts noticeably longer than the one she had with me.

"Something wrong, Artoria?" I ask my new Servant, but she slowly shakes her head.

"Nay. I thought I sensed something, but...please ignore it. It must have simply been my imagination..."

This naturally doesn't sit well with Matthew, who ends up looking even more nervous than before because of what Artoria's said.

"Then for now, this's what our team'll look like," I nod at everyone, but I let myself frown just a little. "But it doesn't seem like we've got much ranged support outside of myself..."

"Do you specialize in ranged magic combat, Master?" Artoria asks me quite solemnly. "As in, like an Archer-Class Servant?"

"I specialize in whatever the team needs. In this case, it'd be ranged support, since Matthew is a defensive, close-ranged support who can help back the two of you up in combat, which means that preferably, we'd need someone who can cover the rest of you from afar," I reason. "So that means that I'm the one who'll cover that for you three."

"But do know that should the fighting become dangerous, you need only to leave the brunt of the fighting to us," Artoria declares, with the conviction of a king as usual. "Although this may be unlike the usual Holy Grail Wars into which I am normally summoned, I cannot assume that the lethality and the danger of this singularity is any less potent."

"Thanks, but even though I've only ever heard of the Holy Grail War, it's not like I don't know what fighting in a war's like," I give my newest Servant a quick grin. "But that being said, don't worry, I won't get myself in trouble, and if I do, I'll be sure to rely on the rest of you to back me up."

Artoria nods, as do the others.

"Well...that should be it for now. Let's go back home, since it's already pretty late at night..." I murmur, checking the time by raising my hand up in front of myself and tapping the air, releasing a set of small blue ripples, as if I've just broken the surface of a still pond, and the ripples swiftly snap together to form a small rectangular panel that displays the time in digital format: 2314 hours. "Oh, geez, it's late. Yeah, let's go back. Artoria, I don't know if you are, but if you're hungry, I can make something quick and simple for you when we - "

A massive growl lurches from Artoria's direction, and for a full three seconds, Matthew, Lily, and I all just stare at Artoria, who slowly but surely starts to cringe.

"Hm," I say with a small shrug, the first one to speak after that huge stomach growl. "I guess if I had any doubts as to whether or not you and Lily are the same person, then I don't anymore."

Both Matthew and Lily burst into stifled giggles, much to the chagrin of the King, who is trying her very best to maintain her kingly composure.

"...I-I wish to apologize, Master. I...all my life, I have always had a...an admittedly large appetite..." Artoria mumbles, practically refusing to make eye contact with me. "So...please forgive me, but I think I will accept your generosity."

"Please don't worry, King Artoria. Lily was like that when Senpai first summoned her too," Matthew smiles benignly, much to Lily's own chagrin.

"L-Lady Matthew, you really didn't need to tell her that, I don't think!" she protests in embarrassment, and to my own surprise, Artoria actually seems quite quietly relieved to hear this. As much as it's hard for me to believe it, I suppose Lily and Artoria are, in the end, the same person.

* * *

Thirty minutes later, Artoria is sitting with Lily on the same side of the table, staring down at the large tray that I've brought for her and put before her. On it sit a large plate loaded with carefully cut bite-sized Korean sausages, eggs done easy over and dashed with the perfect amount of salt, three medium-sized slabs of golden honey ham, grilled onions sauteed in honey ham juice, and some reheated, leftover sliced potato and carrot stir fry, a bowl of miso soup that I'd made for dinner before heading out to Meridian Park earlier in the evening, a bowl of fluffy white rice, and even a side dish of freshly cut kimchi. It actually seems more of like a breakfast, but personally, since I'm a fan of stereotypical American-style breakfast foods at any time of the day, personally this meal doesn't seem strange to me at all. In fact, I've never really let the concept of time interfere with what I want to eat for breakfast, lunch, or dinner at any point - I am an adamant believer in the freedom of eating whatever you want, whenever you want.

"Ah, if that's too much food, it's alright if you leave some," I tell her, trying to read past the look of surprise on Artoria's face. "I just figured, since you and Lily are the same person, since Lily eats a lot, you'd eat a lot too."

"M-Master...!" Lily protests again, blushing in embarrassment.

"What?" I shrug back at Lily, but she simply pouts and turns away a little, her lips trembling as she purses them away from me. "Aw c'mon, you two're supposed to be the same person, right? How's that embarrassing?"

"But - but she said that we have different enough experiences to make us two different people!" Lily argues a little bit hotly. "So...so...th-that's a little bit...!"

"Alright, alright, my bad, my bad."

In the meantime, Artoria has dug into her food and is stuffing herself already. I'm surprised she's gorging on the rice immediately; Lily herself isn't too huge a fan of rice, and while she doesn't mind eating it, it's not like she's ate it like Artoria's going after her own now.

"You really like rice, huh," I can't help but comment, and just as I say that, she turns and asks me:

"Do you happen to have a pair of chopsticks, Master?"

I point down at her tray, and she leans a little and finds a pair of metal chopsticks already hiding underneath the side of the plate; the fork was more visible since it doesn't have room to slide underneath the plate like the chopsticks can. She immediately picks them up and starts wielding them like a natural - it's like Artoria is a bona fide Asian with how well she can use chopsticks. Somehow, it's a little scary and intimidating - because I think she can use chopsticks better than I can.

"Sorry for asking, but...someone taught you how to use chopsticks, right?" I ask a little hesitantly, since I don't want to be rude talking to someone who's eating, since I'd sometimes get a little annoyed if I get spoken to while I'm eating, depending on the situation and the context. Artoria makes sure to swallow the food in her mouth first before speaking.

"That is correct. In two of the Holy Grail Wars in which I was summoned, I was situated in Japan, and that was when I learned the art of chopstick usage for eating," Artoria explains, glancing over at me briefly. "Why, is it strange to you that someone like me who is not of Oriental descent is proficient in the art of chopsticks, Master?"

"Uhhh..." I scratch the side of my neck, having been put on the spot. "I mean...yeah, I guess it is. Can't say I know too many people who aren't Asian who know how to use chopsticks. Well, as well as you can, anyway. I actually have a few friends who know how to use chopsticks, but since they don't use them as their, like, primary utensil whenever they eat, they're normally not that good with them."

I go to wash my hands off with soap in the nearby restroom that's right behind the dining table (one of the few complaints I do have about this house - it's a little ridiculous to have the bathroom shoved up right next to the dining room, and I've never understood this particular aspect of architecture inside this place, but at least a thick wall separates the two rooms), and when I return, I hit the kitchen first to go through the pantry so that I can bring over a few snacks for everyone to enjoy, including Artoria, presumably after she finishes eating her late dinner.

"Would you girls like some?" I ask Lily and Matthew, offering the snacks to them, and Lily's face brightens at the sight of them as I set them down on the middle of the table.

"Y-You're really too kind, Master..." she says in a decreasing tone while she shyly and hesitantly takes a box of seasoned thin rice snack called "Go-Rae-Bab", which literally means "Whale Food" in Korean. "What's this...?"

"Oh, that's a kind of...seasoned snack. If you open up the box, there's like another little plastic bag inside, and then you open that up and pour it into the box," I instruct Lily, and she follows said instructions and carefully pours the snack into the container box. "Yeah, just like that. And you eat it right out of the box with your fingers."

"Oooh...I see..." Lily nods and gingerly picks up one of the crackers - or pieces - or whatever, I really don't know what each one of that snack would be called in English, because it'd be awkward to call it a "cracker". Each individual piece is very small, like the size of a jelly bean, perhaps larger, and they're all shaped like little whales and covered with seasoning. The seasoning itself isn't _sweet_ , exactly, but it'd be incorrect to call it _spicy_ , either, but what I do know is that it's a very good-tasting seasoning...unique, some might say, but in a very good way. In any case, she holds the piece she's picked up and smiles rather cutely. "It's shaped like this thing on the box. How cute...!"

"It's supposed to be a whale," I explain, opening up my own bag of spicy Saeoo-Kang, another Korean snack that means simply "Shrimp Cracker", while Matthew helps herself to a box of Oh!Gamja, another - you guessed it - Korean snack that's more like traditional American potato chips, but rather than chips, they're big seasoned hollow potato wedges that make a satisfying crunch when you bite into them, probably due to their hollowed insides.

"Whale? Oh...I-I think...it's an animal...? An animal from the sea, right?" Lily guesses. "I'm sorry, we...er, _I_ \- I'd never heard of them back in my own time, so...it was just a little bit unfamiliar..."

"Yeah, no, it's fine. That snack, it literally means 'Whale Food' in Korean."

"D-Does it? That's...that's very cute..." Lily smiles before putting the piece she's holding into her mouth. I can still hear the tiny _crunch_ of the piece as it gets crushed between Lily's teeth, even over the munching of Artoria next to her and the crunching coming from my own mouth and Matthew's, and I enjoy the show as Lily's green eyes widen as she experiences a taste she's never experienced before. "...i-it's delicious...! Such a strange taste...but it's...it is so tasty..."

Captivated by the taste of the snack, Lily immediately tosses another piece into her mouth and savors the flavor of that one too, now that she's broken the ice. I see that she instinctively prefers to eat that snack one piece at a time - I know a few friends who prefer shoving handfuls of the snack into their mouths all at once, but personally I like how Lily eats it because it's the same thing that I do - it makes the snack last a lot longer, and you get to indulge in the taste more.

"Not only can you make great food, but you also keep such great snacks," Matthew giggles to me, back in her normal hoodie, tie, and glasses again as she makes sure to give a potato wedge to Fou, who nibbles it rapidly, almost like a hamster working on a big lettuce leaf. "At this rate, you'll just end up concentrating more on feeding us rather than having us actually fight."

"Oh, the fighting'll come on its own, we don't need to worry about that," I roll my eyes a little bit, but not necessarily _at_ Matthew. "But I happen to believe firmly that you fight better on a full stomach, or at least one that isn't yelling at you to eat. If I can do that, then you girls can fight at your maximum performances. Or that's how my train of thought goes..."

"Maybe...Master likes watching us eat...?" Lily adds with a giggle of her own. I swear, Lily's giggles could bring dead people back to life, which is easier to say than you'd think, especially when there's a random lily flower sprouting on the edge of the table all on its own, seemingly.

"I mean, one of the greatest complements to a person's cooking skill is whether or not people like it enough to eat all of it," I reason. "I think I've done a pretty good job so far."

"Do you have seconds, Master?" Artoria almost shoves her empty rice bowl into my face, prompting me to point a finger at her casually and say,

"...like such," and cause the other two to laugh as I take her rice bowl and go back into the kitchen to refill it with white rice. I only notice that the rest of her plate is completely cleaned off, not a single morsel of food left to be seen, and as I give her back the second bowl of rice, I ask, "you only wanted rice? I can make more food for you if you'd like."

Artoria's face lights up even brighter, and I didn't think that was possible, especially when she's sitting right next to her already luminescent younger self.

"Yes, please!" she demands. Well, then, if a King has placed her demand, I surely can't refuse, can I?

"A-Artoria, please, that's...you shouldn't make Master make more food for you, it's already so late..." I can hear Lily whisper a little more loudly than she should as I open up the fridge to grab more food to make; it'll just be second servings of what I'd given her.

"Well...he was the one to offer..." Artoria mutters back, but the hesitation and clear tone of guilt make clear her awkward afterthoughts.

"I'm fine with making another serving, but it'll have to be the last one, simply because we just don't have enough food in the fridge left to make any more proper meals," I call over through the window in the kitchen; the kitchen is connected to the dining room through a big open section that's cut out, providing space for a countertop to be used as a morning patio of sorts, so that food can be made in the kitchen and served quickly to those sitting on the other side.

"Yes, of course, Master," Artoria calls back, and I get to cooking again. As I cook, I listen to the girls' conversations, which are just casual side conversations, one of which entails Lily telling her future self all about the Go-Rae-Bab that I've given her and offering her some, and I think I can hear Artoria start munching on them too at some point.

Indeed, when I walk out of the kitchen to give Artoria her freshly cooked second helping of rice, miso soup, eggs, Korean sausages, ham, and grilled onion (I'd already given Artoria the rest of the sliced potato and carrot stir-fry leftovers), I find Artoria nibbling on the seasoned Whale Food, eating them together with her younger past self, which in itself is a rather adorable scene. Fou is sitting in Matthew's lap munching on her own piece of potato wedge that it's holding with its small paws and licking them after she eats it in full, and I resume my seat and begin to watch Artoria start demolishing the food as before.

"Senpai, is it alright if I ask you some questions about...um, your combat ability? Because...from what I'd seen earlier tonight, um...your fighting style is, uh, really interesting, to say the least..." Matthew quietly murmurs to me, like she's trying to keep this conversation private from the other Servants, which defeats itself since I know that the two Artoria's can easily hear her when we're sitting right across the table from them. At the mention of this, expectedly, Lily subconsciously glances over at me too, but since I just so happen to be glancing back at her, she ends up looking straight into my eyes, making eye contact with me, which spooks her and cause her to quickly glance away.

"Yeah, sure. Ask me anything," I shrug, returning to my spicy Shrimp Crackers and popping a few of them at a time into my mouth, crunching on them quite loudly, though I mitigate the noise I produce by keeping my lips shut as I chew.

"So...when we first met King Artoria, you told us that you would assume a ranged support role for the three of us because our current party is lacking someone who can fight enemies at a distance," Matthew begins. "But contrary to that, you were sparring with Miss Lily very well, especially when you consider the fact that you actually fought her unarmed while she was using a sword - and not just any sword, but _Caliburn..._ "

"I wasn't fighting unarmed, that's...you can't say that," I shake my head. "You saw those runes I had slapped over my arms. I make those to protect my arms from Caliburn's magic. I don't know exactly what it is, but I got the sense that it's strong enough to rip my arms off if Lily really focused on doing that."

"I-I'd - I'd never want to do something like that to you, Master!" Lily protests in horror, making me feel pretty bad for mentioning that.

"I'm just saying hypothetically, if you were fighting another regular human like me and you put enough power behind your sword, you could do some serious damage just with the mana you put into Caliburn," I elaborate quickly. "But yes, those runes're my weapons; they keep my arms safe from other magics when I'm fighting against people who have enchanted weapons or weapons like Caliburn that possess their own mana flow that they take from their owners. I mean, you've also seen me attack Lily with that big rune that shot off all those beams, right? The little laser things?"

"Well, yes, but that's not what you used primarily to fight Miss Lily with," Matthew replies. "And I'd like to ask, which school did you learn to produce these runes? Because...usually the more mainstream runes aren't developed for the purpose of physical defense, at least not to the degree that yours clearly were designed for..."

"School?" I ask Matthew, making my facial expression clear that I never even knew about the existence of "schools" of magic.

"Er...wait, Senpai, are you, by any chance, self-taught?"

"Yeah. I guess."

"S-Self-taught, and - and your proficiency over runes is this good?" Matthew gawks at me. "Surely you didn't receive _any_ kind of instruction from, like, a mentor or teacher or something like that?"

"I mean...my late foster father _used_ to be a mage, but then he retired, and I just stumbled upon what few books about magic he had lying around the house, and then he decided to teach me a few things. I just kinda built off from there because I was so interested."

Matthew gives me that look that clearly replies in kind that she doesn't believe me.

"I'm not lying," I murmur with a simple shrug, popping a few more shrimp crackers into my mouth.

"I-I never said you were, but...it's...it's just so hard to imagine that...that someone with no formal education in magics or rune construction can fight someone like the King of Britain who's armed with a holy sword like Caliburn - and very well, at that."

"Why, do most mages these days qualify to be a mage by attending school and whatnot? Magic school?" I ask back.

"Yes. The Mages' Association we spoke of the other night, many mages attend it or other schools around the world to receive their training and education. Of course, the fact that there are people who really do end up teaching themselves magic somehow certainly isn't a novel one, but even then, the vast majority of them do receive some kind of instruction or higher education at some point if they wish to pursue magic as a career choice or incorporate it as a major part of their lives. And the ones who don't, well, they...they eventually vanish into obscurity, for the most part, and they stop being magically active. But you're active enough to the point where you're the local Resident Guardian, and...personally, I think you're a lot stronger than you care to let off, Senpai."

I chuckle a little. "That's flattering," is all I have to say to that.

"I-It's not meant to be flattering, I think it's the truth, I really do," Matthew insists. "Plus, even you told King Artoria that you've seen your own fair share of war and combat, so...even if you call it 'flattering', you're obviously hiding some real talent."

I laugh a little. "I guess we'll see for sure if I've got that 'real talent' you're referring to once the singularity hits," I point a shrimp cracker at Matthew before tossing it into my mouth. I also notice Fou glance up at me, and then down at my shrimp cracker bag, so I take one out and offer it to her, watching her take it from my fingers with her own mouth and start chomping on it bit by bit, which causes me to look up at the other Artoria's and say,

"Since we'll be goin' grocery shopping tomorrow, you two don't mind tagging along? Since I get the feeling that I'll have to buy a _lot_ of food to feed you all."

Lily giggles very awkwardly, scratching the back of her head shyly and with a fair degree of chagrin while Artoria, for her part, adopts a little bit of a painful expression as she humbly chews on another chopstickful of white rice.


End file.
